China Search Daily

According to the lunar calander, today is Dragon Boat’s Day.

Happy Dragon Boat’s Day from chinese search engines:

Baidu shows us a picture of Zongzi dumplings, which is the traditional food for this festival.

Google presents a real Dragon Boat, there is always a Dragon Boat Game at this festival. Very popular even at oversea countries.

Sina greets us with a real Dragon Boad Game, we can see boats competing with each other.

Sohu does nothing for this festival, Sogou means a Dog for Search, maybe Dog does care about our traditional festival.

Yahoo does something, not for Dragon Boats day, but for World Cup 2006. Every day is World Cup day now, I love World Cup too, but they sould at least show some respect to chinese tradition, otherwise, their localization will be just a JOKE!

Thanks to Zhongsou, although I seldom use their search engine, I like this logo, they pay a real repect to the great poet, Qu Yuan. The festival is to worship him! Zongzi Dumplings and Dragon Boat were all related to him.

Summary for this festival:
One of the legend says:
“on the fifth day of the fifth lunar month in 278 B.C., Qu Yuan committed suicide by grasping a large rock and throwing himself into the Miluo River.

Local fisherman raced to their boats to recover his body, beating drums and splashing their paddles on the water to scare away the fish. But it was all to no avail. In one version of the legend, they began throwing rice on the water as a sacrifice to their dead hero, and to nourish his spirit. One night, the image of Qu Yuan appeared to one of the fisherman in a dream. In the dream, the poet revealed that the fish were eating the rice. He asked that the rice be wrapped in silk to protect it. Later, the silk was replaced with bamboo leaves.”

This story also tells us the history of dragon boat race and zongzi dumpling (Rice Packets).

Here is more information about this festival http://chinesefood.about.com/od/foodfestivals/a/dragonboat.htm

How many chinese search engines?

Here is a list:

21Cn and its search.21cn.com
Baidu
ChinaDotCom and its sou.china.com
Google china
Lycos china (dead)
Netease and its 163
Sina and its Iask
Sohu and its Sogou 
Tencent and its Soso
Tom Online and its i.tom.com
Yahoo china
Zhongsou

Baidu, Google China and Yahoo China all have their own search technology and crawlers, Sina and Sohu have too. Sina developed its own search brand Iask and Sohu did Sogou. but there is a funny things that both of their english website’s search powered be Accoona!! Zhongsou has it own technology and crawler.

But the rest are all powered by others. 21Cn, ChinaDotCom, Netease, Tencent, Tom online are sorts of portals, they dont develop their own crawler, their paid search are powered by those above crawler providers. Even lycos china, at the year 2004, their paid search was powered by Baidu!

Each of the above chinese search engines have their market share in china. There are at least 11 search engine players in China. New players are still coming in. I had visited ASK branch at China, they located at the Zhejiang Province since early 2005, a team of about 200 employees have been working very hard there for more than one year.  And I found Mr Jeeves still there, but they said HE will leave soon!! But I am sure, ASK China is coming soon.

Who power who?

Baidu powers: 21Cn, Lycos China
Google powers: Netease (163), Tencent (Soso)
Yahoo powers: Tom Online
Sogou powers: ChinaDotCom

Who own the client?

An very good question from Mike Grehan, my friend. When we came accross the reseller and agency issue in China, mike asked me this question.

This is quite a frequent question at traditional business. Mike is the first person from outside of China asked me this question. Basicaly, the agencies and resellers serve their clients, but, when clients grow up ( normally their budget and spends grow up), Search Engines will possibably go to the target client directly and manage the account as sort of VIP client.

That happens all over the world in different markets. It did happen in China too. Especially from the end the 2004, Baidu started the war between Search Engines and Resellers. A few resellers died in the past two years, they didnt own their “Baidu” clients, Baidu did.

Why just “a few” died?

Most of the resellers still own their clients. Although they are almost a reseller, they serve their client not only PPC services, but also a wide variety of internet related services. Domain, web building and maintaining, Email server, web hosting are the main services they have. Even PPCs, their offer more than just Baidu or Google.

Yes, a reseller also resell enough services, or a so called ” solutions”. The business owner of the reseller company or his/her saleperson even have a very good personal relationship with their clients. They go dinners at night, do parties at weekend, they know everything to maintain the client relationship. They own their clients. Maybe a few of their clients will also grow up to be big advertisers, maybe Search Engines assigned them some VIP accounts and VIP managers, but they will still want those reliable local partners (resellers) to help them. One or two clients will go to a specific search engine directly, that did happen before, but they still need other local service and assitance.

So, regarding the above question, I will like to say:” It depends!”

Yes, that’s a real situation. Whenever you come across a chinese internet marketing agency, you should ask a question first. Are you a real agency or just a reseller.

Agencies revenue base in its professional service, and charge by the percentage of budget or charge by the man power used.

Resellers revenue base in its commission or rebate from the service providors. Normally those providors are search engines, protals etc.

Most of the internet technology companies are resellers, they serve for baidu, yahoo china, sina, sohu…… and resell their PPC, online advertisement, they even resell domain and hosting.

During the past 5 years, resellers were the main force that enhance the development of internet business in china.

Normally, resellers were divided into 3 types. National distributors, district deallers and local resellers.

National distributors, like Timev, once signed a national dealership contract and had the exclusive right to distribute PPC or CPM, they normally build up an reseller channel covering most of the provinces and cities of china. They share part of the commission with sub-resellers / local resellers. National distibutors, such as Timev, are sort of pioneer for this industry in China, they educate the market, resellers and advertisers.  Most of the time, they dont contect the advertisers.

District dealers, they dont have a national wide dealership, but they still own an exclusive district dealership. Here district means one or more specific provinces or cities. They build district reseller channel, and have direct sale for advertisers.

Local resellers, they resell for both dealers and those providers (SEs or Portals), they have direct sale, they own a team of tele-marketing employees.

Internet industry here in China follows all the thoery of trandition business. Providers (SEs and Portals) and resellers are always balancing each other with higher revenue and profit. So the commission policies were changing all the time. Policies are getting more and more strict, the rebate targets are getting higher and higher.

There are several different destinations for resellers: merged by SEs, launch own marketing tools or solutions, become an agency, died.

Baidu was the first one to buy resellers, they bought their shanghai reseller 71W.com at 2004. And baidu’s other actions did kill some resellers, they just took over all the client / advertisers at certain provinces and cities. Some reseller company owners even wanted to get united and fight Baidu. At 2004, articles, bbs, blogs were talking about the crisis for resellers.

If there were not good price, most of the resellers didnt want to be merged. But they also want to survive. So nearly every of them want to launch their own service, and become more creactive. They launched small business directories, affiliate marketings and other internet applications. But most of them still dont find their vision and right method to develop their own business.

Some resellers are looking forward to be a real agency. They improve client relation management, budget control and study tools for real search engine marketing.

2006 is the turning corner for resellers. There is also opportunities for global players and VCs. Because, in terms of market share expanding, resellers are more aggresive than agencies.

China Search Daily just wants to share my personal ideas, thoughts and experiences about search engine and related indutry in China.

Some of the posts here may have their chinese version at my another blog www.inwayni.com, and hopefully will be posted at those chinese popullar internet industry portals and BBS.

I wont be able to post here everyday, but I am sure my post here will be fresh and inside for people interested in China and Search Engine related industry.

My post will cover portals, search engines, B2Bs, yellow pages, agencies, resellers, advertisers, SMEs and friends in this industry.