Google and segmentation of the Islamic finance body of knowledge

Abstract EN

The study sets out to make evident the existences of segmentation of the Islamic finance body of knowledge (BOK).

The segmentation results from the combination of dependency of Islamic finance researchers on google and using Islamic finance terms (IFTs) as search keywords.

The study defines Islamic finance terminology as the Arabic/Islamic terms unique to Islamic finance literature written in English, e.g.

Shariah.

A distinctive feature of Islamic finance terms is that a single term can have many spelling variations.

Firstly, to validate the presence of BOK segmentation, we investigated spelling variation among IFTs through a variation analysis among a sample of chosen terms.

Secondly, we established the dependency of producers and users of Islamic finance literature on online resources and especially Google and Google Scholar using a survey.

Lastly, we observed segmentation in the BOK by examining the absence of search results that overlap for IFTs and their variations.

The spelling variations among our samples ranged from zero to eight with an average of (4.8) spelling variations per IFT.

The dependency rate on online resources among our respondents was (99%) on Google, while Google Scholar scored (98 %).

The search results’ analysis yielded zero overlaps between the search results confirming the actuality of segmentation.