China Search Daily

Yahoo is the first global search engine player came to china. Some may regard Google as the second one into China.

That’s wrong. Mr. Jeeves came earlier than Google China. I met Mr. Jeeves this April at Hangzhou, the headquarter of Alibaba.

Yes, although the branding was only ASK then, but Mr. Jeeves still stood right there smiled to me.

According to the information from Mr. Jeeves Hangzhou office, they came to China at the early 2005. More than 200 employees have beening working there for nearly two years. We are expecting ASK and its service in chinese.

But when can we have ASK.com in chinese, or ASK.cn? I check the website ask.com, cant find the chinese; I check ask.cn, it seems the domain belongs to a chinese company.

When, why and what? Maybe I should ASK Mr. Jeeves again, if he still there.

Baidu’s lay off action was revealed recently by some medias in China.

After some mouth battles with medias like sohu, it looks like this issue will be make up by pro pr.

But some ex-employees of Baidu started to blog some inside information. Some even owned baidu’s stock option. Sure the option gone with the wind after the lay off.

Why a normal lay off can cause such reaction? Rumor said that more than one million dollar options gone away after that. Rumor also said this lay off action was a sudden and rush one, they didnt even have a chance or enough time to feed back. Well, it looks strange. A mature company will never implement lay-off in this way.

Baidu was named as the Best Employer of 2005 by CCTV. But this “Blog Gate” has the possibility to ruin this reputation. Articles from those blogs attracted a massive traffic at past days, and the influence was still growing, more and more complaints are coming soon.

Blog Gate to be continued.

Google anounced its 10th official reseller in China, fj53.com. As the name indicated, fj53 will mostly serve the Fujian province.

Google china is gradualy narrowing down resellers’ serving area. From the very beginning, its first two resellers could play as a national reseller to cover all over china. Later, new resellers are onle be official in specific area. Now the 10th is more specific than before, will mostly serving a specific province.

One more reseller, and there will be 11, enough to be a football team.

China search engine market is another World Cup, or China Cup, the google China team’s performance depends on the reseller recruitment and training strategies. Sure the coach is very important too.

But it seems the coach’s voice now are not very strong. Hardly can we find any single news about him recently.

The search engine china cup is ready. How about the google china team? Be dream Brazil team, or champion Italian team?

From the midnight of June 23th, to the afternoon of 24th, beijing time, Google’s .cn domain and MSN’s .cn domain were hijacked for hours.

All the visits to www.google.cn were redirected to a chinese B2B site, which was owned by a .cn domain registrar. The same happened to MSN and 4 other global brands.

At the year of 2002. Google.com was once hijacked and redirected to Baidu in China.

Some Yahoo China resellers started to complaint.

After the Alibaba-Yahoo deal, real name business and CPC business for Yahoo China became one department, that was Jack Ma’s strategy for Yahoo. Which meant that there would be only one team and one reseller system for this two business. Jack even simplified the yahoo china’s homepage, cut all the portal elements, made it a pure search engine.

But now, Yahoo China back to a portal, just as the same as the Yahoo before deal. Jack’s search engine strategy went home.

Last week, the GM for Yahoo China SME resigned, He took care all the reseller channel management. Real name business and CPC business again back to the situation before the deal, that is each has it own reseller channel and managing team.

Yes, everything back to 1 years ago. The reform failed.

At May, three big resellers of yahoo gave Jack Ma emails. They tried to warn Jack that all their resell business for Yahoo were shrinking. They needed more channel support to win the market share back.

At the first six month of 2006, Hardly any reseller’s performanece reach their targets. That was unusual. The 3721 resellers used to be the most aggresive and fast developing group.

Alibaba should learn from this lesson. Search far more than B2B.

Who is the Number One at Chinese Search Engines market?
The answer is Baidu.

Where is Google China?
Google is the third, right after Yahoo.

Why Yahoo search is the Second?
They still relied on the real name (3721) business. The search performance for them is not as strong as the position indicates.

According to the report of Analysys International, at 1 quater of 2006, Baidu’s market share was 43.9%, Yahoo China was 21.10%, Google China 13.20%. The total market scale for chinese search engine is 303 million RMB, 175 million RMB of which is from CPC, 9 million RMB from  search AD ( fixed ranking ), 120 million RMB from real name search.

Although the real name search still has a big share, their performance is shrinking. Chinese real name search is not a long-term products. The advertisers are losing their interests at Real Name search. According to the two main real name search player, Yahoo China’s 3721 and Zhongsou, their revenue growth is negative now.

Google should speed up its localization. I can see many chinese googlers have international company working experience. They are more global than local.

Take Yahoo China for example, before the Alibaba deal with Yahoo. Leaded by Mr Chou, Yahoo China is very local and aggressive.

Google should find a person like Mr Chou, the former Yahoo China CEO, founder of 3721.

Yes, They came back as what they promised.

This early morning, I rechecked those 3 chinese Search Engines, Sina’s Iask, Sohu’s Sogou, Search of China.com. They all came back.

I did some queries at some products keyword and World Cup 2006. The result were perfect, lots of informations as usual. Even those urls for gambling information site were there and the link at the search engine was live.

Yes, business is business. They did what they said. And they back to the right business track for Search Engines.

Although search engines are always regarded as an reliable information center. I like the search to serve us at our daily life, business or study, entertainment or sports.

Just dont be Evil!

The “updating” is over, everyone back to the chinese playground of search engines. 

Today, I did a routine check at all the chinese search engines. 3 of them posted a notice at their homepage, and saying that there are upgrading.

Sina’s Iask, Sohu’s Sogou, and China.com’s search.

Iask notice:

Sogou notice:

China.com notice:

Its easy to explain the upgrading notice of China.com, because their search is powered by Sogou.

What happened to Iask and Sogou, or What happened to Sina and Sohu. They must be experiencing something.

A little bird told me that this “upgrading” would last for 3 days, from 19th to 21th. And the related resellers all got sorry letters before that from search engines. The letter said that due to some unexpected issue, they would stop the search for 3 days and would provide extra one week service as compensation.

Some rumor said that they might merge each other. I dont believed that. A very reliable little bird told me that, someone will be the Timev Second, and become the exclusive dealer for sou.china.com’s pay search. They had the contract in the hand.

So, the situation is that 3 chinese search engines will take 3 days off each, maybe from 19th to 21th, maybe longer.

Anyway, we still have google, baidu, yahoo, zhongsou and all the chinese search they power.
It’s enough!

Yes, there were several defferent Anti- Unions at recent two years. Anti-Baidu union or Anti-Google Union.

I would like to say that was just another PR show.

The one who launched this union was an 3721 reseller, they dont have any official relationship with google. Sure, they aren’t google resellers. Although they did do some web related business together with 3721 real name search business, they seldom suggestted google adwords to their clients. Yes, they dont have any direct reason to fight google.

The union was a show, I came accross some of the resellers on the list of the union. None of them said they did jion the union. All of them claimed privately to me that they never jion the union.

Some of them were very angried, they said that they partner reseller invited them to a new product luanching event. They just simply replied an “yes” but never go there. Finally the launching event became an anouncement for Anti-google Union. And their companies’ name were on top of the list.

One more thing, none of the members on the list is google reseller.

This was really just a PR show. Someone wanted to make his own reputation by playing a trick to Google or other leading brand in this market.

The search engine business started as search ADs 6 years ago in China. Now only the voice of PPC is loudly.

Search ADs includes Banner, Fixed Top 10 positions and several left side vertical formats. Yes, the ADs types here before were very complicated, even more complicated than portal ADs. Some portals Ads like pop up was once there at search result. Sina used to have the most complicated search ADs formats, and sure later became the most not user-friendly search.

PPC is well-known by the world now.

But I still believe that search AD, or delicated search AD format can be very helpful for advertisers.

The function of PPC is mostly sale leads, the function of search AD is mostly brand awareness.

Zhongsou.com and 163.com still have banner AD at their search result. 21CN, as the most influencial entertaiment broadband portal, launched their Banner AD too.

Brand awareness may benefit from PPC, but will not only from PPC, search AD will still be prodcutive for a long time.