Qatar Living Down?

Update: The site is up again (As soon as I posted this!)

We're trying to update our driving page, and have been having a little debate about tests. We've been told that Westerners have to take tests now, while the updated government website says in Arabic and English that you don't have to.

Before ringing the Ministry of Interior up, I decided to have a quick check on the net. There's an interesting discussion on QatarLiving, but when you click through the website is down.



I hope it's back up soon, but the website has been having problems all week. I have tried several times earlier in the week to post for a friend, but it has not worked.

Competitor

We hope the site is up soon. Some sites see Qatar Living and Qatar Visitor as competitors, but we have different concepts (articles v. user generated content). We get a lot of hits of Qatar Living, and as there are many links from our site to Qatar Living I believe we boost them as well.

Rumours

I've heard rumours that the site is thinking of closing itself down, but I am sceptical. The site has got to be worth a lot of money, so, unless there has been external pressure, the logical option would be to sell rather than shut down the site.

It is also possible they are feeling the pinch, though. Since the recent controvery over Qatar National Day I've seen fewer adverts on the site. They, like us, have google adsense, but with forums the clickthrough rate is lower (per page view) while with thousands of users server costs must be huge.