China Search Daily

Baidu is saying “Hi” to every internet user in China.

Among the 210 million china internet users, more than 50% percent is using IMs everyday.

IM even become the first access for quite a large percentage of internet users.

Even more users use IM to be gateway for all their online activities.

Reading, Searching, Gaming, Shopping… etc, you can get it all within an IM like QQ ( a most popular IM in China by Tencent ).

Here is some figure that might help you to understand the power of success IM in China.

The profit for Baidu in 2007 is 629 million RMB, compared with Tencent’s 1,599 million RMB, it looks like a little sister.

Very online company want to get revenue from ADs and virtual transaction, via QQ the IM, Tencent got it all.

That’s why Baidu luanch their IM “Hi”. Baidu are actually saying hi to more royalty users and more profit.

Search is not simply a search bar or a box, the value for search is the theory of relevency. Relevency drives more attention for Brand Awareness and Business Lead.

But how internet user find those relevent content ( ad, transaction and game)?

IM, directory, search engine, portal, online game…etc. Every of these get the opportunity to become the first stop of internet users in China.

Are you ready to ready a hi to baidu. here is the picture.

You can easily find a search box right under the user name. Yes, that’s me, if you want a Baidu hi invitation, just feel free to let me know, i will give you one

Here is the list

24/7 Real Media intergrated Baidu API with their own Decide DNA® platform at Oct, 2007. find the news from both 24/7 Real Media press release and WPP press release.

Almost at the same month, Sinotech Search anounced the integration between their SinoMaximizer with Baidu API.

Ad-Sage was the first one to anounce the integration at Feb 2008. Their technology even support those online marketing agency in USA like icrossing.

From the same WPP family of 24/7 Real Media, Neo@Ogilvy launched their own Keyword manage tool and integrated with Baidu API at March 19, 2007. The Neo technology was actually supported by MakeMeTop by MicroChannel Technology, a smart company from North Irland.

Guess there will be more or already more companies getting or got baidu api. But here is those I found so far. And I am going to meet them all at SMX China next month.

When you check in Baidu right now, you will find the logo of baidu with Shadow Draft of Xu Sanduo, the hotest TV Character at the hotest TV Series at China.

Xu Sandou is the Mr November of Baidu, or he shows up like a Cover Man of Baidu.

Baidu doesnt seem to follow the feature logo game with Google, Baidu wants to create it’s own style.

From Nov 7 2007, Baidu will list one person’s picture at the homepage with Baidu logo, he or she will be the Mr. or Miss. of the specific month.

If you click in the logo, then you will be taken to a holding page of the cover story.

Yes, Xu Sanduo is there right now, and will be there for one month with his story.

Baidu says that the decision process will be very simple, just pick up the hotest name / people among the search queries.

Xu Sanduo is the lucky guy to be the first one, who will be the second. I dont know, maybe we should try to find it out at Baidu trend.

Yes, I am talking about Gambling in China this month.

The town is full of dice sound day and night since two weeks ago. From hotel to department store, from grocery store to shopping mall, from school to home, People shouting, laughing, crying with the turn out of six dices.

This panic will continue during next two weeks.

So here comes the official gambling month, but only in Xiamen, Quanzhou, and some parts of southeast china.

This is the Mid-Autumn festival, people doing the gambling for moon cake. Every business get involved with that.

But what happen to search? I check the Moon Cake Gambling in Baidu and Google. No one buy the keyword on the paid listing, and no business site do the SEO for the organic listing.

Yeah, search need to be more marketing, so do the marketers.

Every year, hundreds of million cash flow during this gambling month in just a singe city. There must be some real business online, event the branding for moon cake company or bakery.

Who is 265.com?

I have posted about 265.com and its founder Mr. Cai before.

265.com is regarded as a grass-root legend in china internet market. They maybe the simplest site in China. I said they were the teenage yahoo, like a directory or navigation site.

A similar website called hao123.com had already merged by Baidu two year ago. After that, IDG VC invested into 265.com, Google followed the coming year.

Both hao123.com and 265.com had contribute huge traffic for both Baidu and Google for since 2004. The most valuabale asset for these website are traffice and massive amount of faithful internet users. A hugh amount of chinese internet user make 265.com as their homepage at the computers.

Now, a little bird told me today,Google extend its investment and merge 265.com into its china branch. No one commeted about that so far.

Are you ready?
If you happen to know chinese and know something about SEO, and pretend to be very creative, you should never miss this chinese SEO contest.

Where to go?
Duhugu. They have a chinese name for that, three chinese characteristic, first first one’s chinese pinyin is “du”, second “hu”, and third “gu”. “duhugu” Which means a valley where tiger always pass the river. Yes go to this valley and apply for the contest.

How to contest?
Duhugu. Yes, although the name have interesting chinese meaning, but actually none of the search engines even index a single page about this keyword. It’s clean and clear from the very beginning. What you need to do is optimizing your page targeting “duhugu” in chinese. There is a very important thing for this contest, be creative for your content and respect to all copyright issues.

How long will this contest lasts?
You can continue enhancing your performance before next year’ SES Xiamen. Which means the contest starts from now and will end at may, 2007.

Any interesting stories?
Sure, most of the people believed that “du” is baidu, “hu” is Yahoo, “gu” is google. “duhugu” stands for the “big three” in chinese. Well, maybe ture, Yahoo’s chinese name in pinyin is “yahu“, Google’s chinese name in pinyin is “guge”, and baidu is “baidu“. Yes, why not, and name with a story and can stands for three search engine.

How about the performance so far?
If you index the “duhugu” in chinese at all the above search engines, hundreds of thousands pages are already there, but before the contest, that was 1 weeks ago, nothing!! Yes, many SEO fans had already taken part in this contest.

If you know some chinese and know SEO, come and join it now.

Baidu is going to launch its Traditional Chinese version search engine. Yes, that is for the oversea chinese, as well as the chinese at Hong Kong, Taiwan, Macau.

Yes, everyone want to serve more Chinese should learn more about chinese.

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.

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.

Baidu bought hao123.com at Sep 2004, with 50 million RMB ( about 6 million USD ) and some stocks of Baidu. That was really a big deal at that year. And the story of hao123.com and its founder Mr Li Xingping became a legend.

IDGVC invested about 20 million RMB ( about 2.5 million USD ) to 265.com at the end of 2004. And Goolge followed up and invested +10 million to 265.com at the beginning of 2006. 265.com and its founder Mr Cai Wensheng was another legend.

Both hao123 and 265 are very simple and common-looks site, initiated by their only founder. Yes, Mr Lixingping did everything related to hao123.com almost by himself. So did Mr Cai Wensheng and his 265.com.

Their Alexa traffic ranking are all among the top 100 at the year of 2004.

They are not portal or search engine. They look as simple as just only one page. We call 265.com and hao123.com as sites navigation site, or url navigation site.

They simply list all the popular site’s name with live link at just one page. But most of the internet users make them as their home page.

Why? Because it’s hard for those Chinese users to remember the urls with English characters. For them, to remember the url and type it at the browser are very challenging to them.

But they know Chinese, so one page with a directory for site name in Chinese and with live link is very convenient to them.

265 and hao123 did try very hard to modify and update their directory, and to make more clear and user-friendly categories.

Because their user friendly, they both occupied the largest share in Chinese home page market. And they brought remarkable traffics to portals and search engines. I believed that ,3 years ago, still a lager percentage of Chinese internet users got to know sites like google from them.

Traffic and user royalty are their core value. They benefited from the sort of adsense from baidu and other searh engines in china since 2003/2004. Which meant they started to turn out cash from their traffics.

Hao123 started from 1999, and 265 started from 2003. Mr Li is pretty young and Mr Cai is still at his 30s now.

Mr Li is enjoying his life Guangdong province. After baidu’s deal with hao123, Mr Cai and his 265.com grew up very fast, now became the leader and hero in Chinese internet industry, especially for those so-called independent webmasters. Thousands of creative small sites and their webmasters/founders were well-connected by MR Cai and his 265.com. He is a “traffic driver” and a “traffic broker”, because he had developed an traffic exchange center (TEC) at his 265.com. At 2004 and 2005, every of the Chinese search engines, B2Bs and B2Cs benefit a lot from this TEC.

At 2005 and 2006, the 1st and 2nd Chinese webmaster conferences were launched by Mr Cai and his partner.

More legends are coming soon.