How we built this

1. Data sources

• Arab / Gulf perfume houses (~2,100 perfumes): scraped from official house websites (Lattafa, Amouage, Ajmal, Arabian Oud, Swiss Arabian, and 15 others — 20 houses total) using a custom scraper that preserved Arabic + English names, notes, and imagery.
• International brands (~960 perfumes): selected from Parfumo's top-reviewed catalog, sorted by review count, excluding houses already covered by the Arab scraper.
• Notes, accords, and scent families: ported from the kokuasistan taxonomy (our sister Turkish-language site), which uses Edwards Wheel as the family reference framework.

2. AI-generated Arabic and English copy

All descriptive copy and headlines are generated by AI models via OpenRouter:

• Primary model: google/gemini-3.1-flash-lite-preview
• Fallback model on failure: openai/gpt-5.4-nano

We generate Arabic and English versions in parallel, each from the same structured data — we never do chained EN→AR translation because it produces stilted Arabic.

3. Arabic brand-name policy

Western brand and perfume names are transliterated into Arabic script following the convention used by Gulf retailers (faces.com, ounass.com, noon.com). For example: Dior → ديور, Chanel → شانيل, Tom Ford → توم فورد. URL slugs stay Latin (e.g., /perfume/dior-sauvage-eau-de-parfum).

4. Scent-family classification

Each perfume has notes; each note carries weighted mappings to accords; each accord maps to a scent family (Floral, Oriental, Woody, Fresh, etc.). We use an IDF-weighted scoring algorithm to pick the dominant accord per perfume, then resolve that accord to a primary family. For perfumes with no note data, we fall back to the brand's modal accord.

5. Update cadence

Descriptions and headlines don't change unless deliberately regenerated. We add new perfumes as they become available. Listing pages (accords, notes, families) refresh nightly.

6. Known limitations

• ~21% of perfumes don’t have full note-pyramid data — we show a “note data unavailable” card.
• ~7% of perfumes lack an official bottle image — we render a muted brass-gradient placeholder.
• Copy is AI-generated without human editorial review. For corrections, email [email protected].
• No user reviews yet — may add later.

7. Open for scrutiny

Our processing code (seed scripts, classifier, generator) is available for review — contact us if you’re a researcher or journalist who wants to see it.

Questions about this methodology? [email protected].