Google publicly declared its intention in March to move its Chinese-language Internet search operation in Hong Kong in hopes of bypassing censorship laws for companies that operate in mainland China, but the public showdown with the Chinese government never seemed destined for a happy ending. Google announced late Tuesday night that China will not renew its Internet Content Provider license–a key authorization scheduled to expire Wednesday–unless Google stops redirecting Google.cn visitors to Google.com.hk.

It seems unlikely that its newest strategy will past scrutiny either. Instead of automatically redirecting Google.cn users, Google has created a landing page at Google.cn “where users can conduct web search or continue to use Google.cn services like music and text translate, which we can provide locally without filtering,” Google said in a blog post. “This approach ensures we stay true to our commitment not to censor our results on Google.cn and gives users access to all of our services from one page.”

Read the full story here:  http://news.cnet.com/8301-30684_3-20009111-265.html

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Baidu to hire U.S. engineers to work in China

Baidu Inc, China’s leading search engine, will start hiring software engineers directly from the United States early next month, as it seeks to expand its technological capabilities and raise its global profile.

Baidu (BIDU.O) stands to be the biggest beneficiary in China’s search sector after Google Inc (GOOG.O) relocated its China servers to Hong Kong following a high-profile spat with Beijing over censorship and hacking.

Baidu would hire 30 mid-to senior-level software engineers from Silicon Valley at a job fair on July 10 to drive new technology projects, its first direct hiring from the United States, a Baidu spokesman told Reuters on Tuesday.

“Baidu believes that talent is the key to our success as a company, and we go where ever the best talent can be found, whether here in China or in Silicon Valley,” Zheng Bin, Baidu’s human resources director said in a statement to Reuters.

“As we develop more and more advanced search technologies, our need for world-class talent will only continue to increase.”

Baidu is a household name in China but not well known overseas. Baidu Japan, the firm’s venture into the Japanese search market, has been loss-making ever since its inception.

Read full article here: http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTOE65S0332010062

According to local reports, the Search Engine Marketing Standard and Regulation is being circulated to drive out disreputable companies who tarnish the reputation of SEM in China and help to steer the healthy advancement of SEM.

Among the goals of the organisations involved include a wider education of the benefits of SEM for businesses looking to become involved with the medium, including an appropriate way to engage in it.

The regulations come one year after Baidu found itself embroiled in several SEM controversies, including accusations of blocking searches containing words associated with the melamine milk scandal as well as being found to have accepted money from fraudulent medical companies to include their websites in Baidu’s top search positions.

In response to the latter, Baidu launched an ad platform that separates its list of paid links from its general search listings.

Disgruntled companies unhappy with their dealings with Baidu further pledged to launch a mass lawsuit against the search engine in December. Each of these hurdles contributed to Baidu’s revenue drop that same month.

According to Barney Loehnis, head of Isobar Asia-Pacific, which is engaged in a search engine optimisation partnership with Baidu, the SEM landscape in China has become increasingly more focused on transparency following the incidents Baidu faced in 2008 as well as pressure from music and video providers looking to preserve copyright entitlements.

In the market, rival Google has worked to make its operations transparent, and Loehnis points out that the regulations are an attempt by Baidu to prove that it is also taking the matter seriously.

“Baidu has traditionally not been as transparent as others in showing what’s a paid result and what’s not, and in that case some consumers wouldn’t be aware of the paid or not paid and the result is that Baidu has fallen at one end of the spectrum where it’s not always known where they’re making money and not making money,” Loehnis said. “Any group operating in transparency has got to be good from a client’s point of view and I would interpret Baidu’s action as a step in the right direction.

“However, some Chinese companies do claim the moral high ground for more political reasons, so I think so it’s up to Baidu which way it falls and follow through to maintain these guidelines,” he continued.

Separately, Baidu announced the launch of a marketing promotion that will see it give Rmb 100 million (US$14.6 million) of display search ads to companies. The offer aims to promote its Baidu Search Marketing Services platform and gives participating companies a 60-day image display ad worth up to Rmb 10,000 ($1,464).

According to reports, the promotion was launched to help broaden Baidu’s image as an ad-sales provider.

Source: http://www.media.asia/newsarticle/2009_09/Baidu-helps-to-launch-SEM-regulatory-guide/37292

In short the relaunch, started on April 20th, now offers advanced account setup possibilities getting closer to Google’s account management standard:

• Renamed from Baidu Bidding (百度竞价) to Baidu Marketing (百度推广)
• Account structure: Account – Campaign – Ad Group – Keyword and Ad
• Daily budget setup
• Keyword matching
• Negative keyword settings
• Text ad rotation
• Geo targeting
• Day parting
• Keyword suggestion tool and bid estimator
• Bulk import and export
• IP exclusion
• Ad preview

Useful links:

http://e.baidu.com/keyword/

So far, this information resulted from some studies and personal observations and discussions. Now, this news: “Alibaba pulls ads from ‘low-quality’ Baidu“.

According to this press release, Alibaba ended its search engine advertising contract with Baidu due to unsatisfying marketing results. Alibaba says that they get too much low-quality traffic from Baidu which doesn’t convert into business. Besides, click fraud rates are on the rise.

So, again, consider this when doing or planning Baidu SEM campaigns:

a) Start your Baidu SEM campaign on a low level, include a test phase to figure out what works and what doesn’t.

b) You can still get a lot of eyeballs through Baidu, so it depends on your online marketing strategy: awareness vs. conversion. What counts more?

c) Clear and good ad text copywriting. Make it clear what the user will get when he clicks on the text ad.

d) Perfect landing page. No confusion or user losses allowed here.

e) Tracking and daily campaign optimization

Here are a few typical Baidu SEO questions and my answers to them:

Which are the relevant SEO factors for Baidu search engine optimization?
Page titles, keyword density, amount of inbound links (not relevancy and quality), and as you can hear, some luck and/or connections into the Baidu organisation.

If I optimize for G, do I automatically optimize for Baidu?
Yes and no. In terms of onsite SEO (titles and content) it would fit, but in terms of offsite SEO (i.e. amount and quality of incoming links) it doesn’t.

How sophisticated are Baidus SEO ranking and paid search bidding algorythms?
Baidu’s paid search factors are basically all about the CPC. Higher price, higher ranking. SEO algorythms can be compared with those of G a few years ago, I’d say.

Can you explain the structure of the Baidu search engine result page?
There is a large left column and a smaller sized right column. In the left column you’ll find the paid search results and underneath, the natural search results. Baidu’s paid search results show a 推广 next to the displayed URL. Natural results can be identified by a 百度快照. The paid search results always come first, the natural results always follow.

The right column looks like paid search as well (like G) but it’s not. These slots can be booked for one whole year and if the desired keyword is already taken you have to reserve it. Position 1 to 3 cost an equal annual fee and rotate among each other. The same is for position 4 to 6 and position 7 to 10.

Baidu SEO, necessary at all?

Well, on the first glimpse: No, because of the strange paid search listings. In the long term: Yes! Why? Because already now many Chinese are unsatisfied with the search results of Baidu. Especially the educated people and white-collar worker use G to find relevant information in the Internet. This is not just a perception, that’s a fact (read this post about Baidu’s and Google’s user demographics and search behaviour).

So, sooner or later, Baidu will have to refine their search and bidding rules and also revise the display of natural search results and text ads on their search result pages. Then, that’s what I believe, the effort that is invested now into Baidu SEO will pay off even greater.

According to reports, the companies are trying to protect website users who have created personal profiles and blogs. These profiles, many of which were created for private audiences, can be crawled by search engines and the information contained on these pages can end up among search engine results.

While these portals and social networks assert their decision to block Baidu is based on users’ rights to privacy, analysts say much of their motivation comes from dissatisfaction at Baidu’s domineering web presence. Just this week, Baidu, which claims 60 per cent of China’s search market share, announced beta tests of its e-commerce site that the company hopes will directly rival market powerhouse Alibaba.

E-commerce auction site Taobao.com, a subsidiary of the Alibaba Group, reportedly moved to block searches conducted by Baidu earlierthis week, as well as partially block searches by Google and Yahoo, in order to protect Alibaba users from being approached by illegal vendors.

“I find this excuse a real stretch. Since when has anybody worried about user privacy in China before? What guidelines do they use for protecting user privacy?” asked Paul Denlinger, owner of China Business Strategy. “This sounds much more like a desire to dial back the power of Baidu and its search.”

Jason Kuperman, regional vice-president of digital development at Omnicom Group, added that, if social networks did not have further motive against Baidu, they could easily have implemented privacy protection measures on their sites instead of blocking the engine.

“I know Facebook allows you to have a specific profile which appears just for searches. That seems like a better solution than actually blocking any search engines,” he said.

Even with its dominant position in China’s search market, the pressure from the host of websites aligned against Baidu may be enough to elicit a strategy change before a distant search rival narrows its lead.

“My guess is that Baidu may put forth some privacy protection guidelines for the industry to discuss, and invite all other players to participate in the discussion,” Denlinger said.

Representatives from Baidu could not be reached for comment.

Recent global market shares of search engines (I/2008, netapplications.com):

Broken down into Asian countries, Google’s markets share looks like this:

I did some research and compared the positions of the search engines in the following Asian markets. If available I added the rough percentages in market share, sometimes the available numbers vary really heavily. Total percentage per country can exceed 100% as users use more than one search engine (depends on the source). Anybody got better, more accurate or additional numbers, just post them, I’ll update the chart.

It is very obvious that Google’s global market share is nurtured by high market shares in the US and EU. In some parts of Asia local search engines and Yahoo are often preferred. Why is that?

Possible reasons:

• missing language adaptation, Google mainly dominates English-speaking countries
• poor management skill, read the comments of this article
• local search engines better serve the desires of the search engine users. Example: Naver in Korea with a total different search result page layout that’s been copied by Google

It is also interesting that e.g. in Vietnam Google is the market leader whereas in the Philippines Yahoo obviously leads the market. And both countries are not English language dominated, I suppose. Any explanations for that?

• Google Adsense China: Type: partner program for text, banner or video ads. Simplified and traditional Chinese available, works the same as in any Western language. Large advertiser database. Although the ads displayed on websites are often not targeted enough, it is pretty popular.

• Alimama.com: Very popular among Chinese webmasters and bloggers, it is an ad exchange portal where one can upload his website/blog and advertisers can book it. I reported earlier about alimama’s user base. Application procedure is Chinese only. Large advertiser database. Simplified Chinese only.

• Sohu/Sogou: Textlink ad solutions provided by Sohu, a minor but fast growing local Chinese search engine. Simplified Chinese only. Registration here.

• YSM: Yahoo’s paid search program, also offers contextual text link integration for webmasters in simplified and traditional Chinese language.

Explanation: Simplified Chinese used in mainland China only, traditional Chinese is used in Taiwan and Hongkong.

The banner on the right side (no.2) has a size of 175×300px and is animated gif. The whole ad covers almost 2/3 of my laptop screen. Under the ad I can just see one and a half other search results.

So what’s the purpose of this ad? I mean, in search engines, when you search for a brand, you will finally definitely land on the brand’s homepage. Ok, brand building for the advertiser is certainly one goal but do you really need to do it for your brand keywords? In terms of generating new revenue it can’t have thus big an effect, as the searches for brands are comparatively low in comparison to the total amount of search inquiries. Another reason could be –due to the large size- to press competitors who are also listed for the brand keyword out of the screen…hmm. What do you think?

So far, there are only two advertiser who take part in the brand advertising program: Gome (国美), the largest consumer electronics store and China Construction Bank (中国建设银行), one of the top 4 banks in China. We called Baidu and asked for prices, purpose and how it works, but the sales agents in Shanghai didn’t even know this advertising program…