Anyway, the last days I always had my digicam lying close to the TV and also brought it when I was on the street in Taipei. In the following you will find some photos I shot; please ignore the poor quality, the keywords are normally only shown for a second or two, so getting the right moment and also holding the camera in the right position was not all that easy.

No matter, what the results will be. There is already a winner: Yahoo. As Yahoo is the dominating search engine in Taiwan many TV spots show a copy of the Yahoo search engine slot in the spot! That’s real good advertising for their brand. And even, if there is a white-label search engine slot in the spot, the people are drawn to the search engine – which is Yahoo (they have a market share of appr. 70%).

Would be interesting how much Yahoo pays for these positions and if they pay for all of them or just for some and others are just adopters.

Here are some examples:

Product:Airwaves
Keyword: 點子
SERP: position 1
Yahoo seems to be co-brand as also strong presence on the landing page


Product: Insurance
Keyword: 愛無憂 = company name


Another example is LG with its cell phone ‘Secret’. In the TV spot there is a search engine slot filled with the keywrod ‘’secret’. If you enter ’secret’ into tw.yahoo.com and click on the LG ad you will not find a subpage on the LG domain (although in the text ad the target domain shows tw.lge.com) but you will be redirected to a LG sponsored blog in a blog network (http://www.wretch.cc/blog/lgsecretclub).

Here are some more shots:

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.

Although the procedure looks pretty easy at the first glimpse, the detailed campaign management is essential for a well-performing search engine marketing campaign. Detailed campaign management includes continuous tracking, monitoring and optimization of the campaigns.

But why is a PPC in China so important?

In China, Baidu is the local search engine and has the biggest market share. They can claim 60% and more with Google being second with roughly 20%. But Baidu’s pay-per-click campaigns and search engine result pages (SERPs) work a little different: All keyword advertising placements will be listed before the index search results. So, professional keyword advertising is a must to be listed in Baidu.

That’s why the selection of a local SEM agency who understands the market and the Chinese search engines is absolutely mandatory for a successful PPC campaign in China.

To ensure high quality of our managed Chinese keyword advertising campaigns we use sophisticated tracking and campaign management software. Besides we are experienced in handling large budgets based on conversions and achieving sales targets.

Glossary terms:

SEM: Short form of China search engine marketing. Synonym for pay-per-click (PPC), keyword advertising or paid search. The meaning is to buy a position in the search engine result pages by bidding for click prices.

ROI: Short form of return-on-investment and a key figure to measure marketing expenses. Let’s you know if a search engine campaign was successful and to which degree.

We have long-lasting experience in Chinese search engine optimization and China SEO. In many Chinese SEO projects we accumulated knowledge about how search engine optimization in China works. Take a look at some of our recent Chinese SEO projects here.

But why is SEO in China so important?

Search engines are definitely the no. 1 entry channel when it comes to find products or services on the Internet. Not only in Western countries anymore, also in China SEO plays a growing role. Search engines have some really rocking advantages which make an online marketing investment in SEO China very effective. One reason to mention is the lack of stray losses as Internet users search for products and a desire doesn’t have to be activated. Another reason is the relevance between the search query that a user enters into the search engine and the result page. The higher the relevance the better the conversion and user experience. Of course

Search engine optimization China (short form is SEO China) is a technique to bring your websites to a higher position in the natural search results of the search engines. Based on year-long experience and several successful projects we understand how search engines work and how to optimize a website for better results.

Chinese search engine optimization campaigns are a long-term process and require continuous monitoring, adaptation and optimization. Besides setting up your account at Baidu, Google and Yahoo we are especially strong at continuously improving the ROI of SEO campaigns. For this we use sophisticated tracking and campaign management software.

Our SEO services in detail:

• keyword research and optimization (long tail)
• SEO Copywriting in Chinese, German and English
• Grow the reputation of your website and make it an expert site
• Constant optimization (keyword positions and density)
• Blog and forum setup

On the banner the fat man with the telescope is supposed to be baidu and can only scan the horizon in a 100 degree angle (literally translated, baidu 百度 means “100 degrees” in Chinese). The tagline means that Yahoo also sees things that baidu doesn’t see which are the small mermaids on the banner.

Webmasters who put Yahoo banner ads on their website already reported to get penalized by baidu with their website being blocked in the baidu search results.

1. Comparing market share and popularity of Google and Baidu in China

Throughout China, the market share of Google and Baidu has been more or less constant in the last few years apart from some minor shiftings in percentage from year to year. The market shares of 2007 don’t really offer rocking news as well, as you can see in the following graph.

But as more and more information about the Chinese search engine market become available, these numbers can be analyzed more in detail. Especially if broken down to certain areas or provinces of China the market shares of the two search engines vary heavily.

CNNIC reports that they compared market shares in different regions: North, Northeast, East, South, Central, Northwest and Southwest China, involving 3 first-class cities, 7 second-class cities, and 14 third-class cities.

The statistics indicated that Baidu.com has a rising trend as the city level falls, while google.com goes the opposite. The priority ratio for Baidu.com in cities of first, second and third class respectively: 67.33%, 73.35%, 83.82% while that for google.com: 22.11%, 14.78%, 4.99%.

The report also mentions that baidu.com and google.com drew in the priority market competition for high end users characterized by “non-student users aged 25 and above, receiving Bachelor’s Degree and above, having a monthly income of over 3,000 yuan”, 47.72% of whom selected baidu.com as first choice while 42.32% chose google.com.

2. Comparing quality of search results from Baidu and Google

Intelliconsulting, a Chinese research company, conducted a survey among search engine users and compared the search results of Google and Baidu. The overall result is that the search result satisfaction among Google users (48.2%) is higher than among Baidu users (39.8%).

If you take a closer look at the graph you can clearly find out the following facts:

• The better educated users are, the more they rely on Google.
• The older they are (and the more disposable income they have), the more they use Google.
• There is no difference among female and male test users.

More findings were:

• The more a user users search engines, the more he likes Google.
• Negative points for Google are the instability of Google’s website, having no page-caching and no free MP3 and other media search functionality.
• Negative points for Baidu are that search results are mixed with paid search results and that no content from Chinese pages abroad is included. That search results are filtered according to governmental requirements is a negative factor as well, according to the study.

Well, what do you think? Two independent researches (CNNIC and Intelliconsulting) come to almost the same conclusion. That’s impressing, as a little unusual for China.

3. Baidu Keyword Advertising (PPC)

How Adwords, Google’s paid search program, works is pretty much known I suppose, so I don’t want to go into detail too much here.

The screenshot below is from google.cn and the keyword is 汽车(car). You can see that there are several ads, one in the highlighted area above the organic search results.

Here is a screenshot from baidu’s search results for the keyword 信用卡(creditcard).

So let me explain the differences to Google:

1. The paid search and the organic results are not clearly divided. You will only notice the difference by the small gray underlined term next to the displayed URL. 推广 means it is paid search, 百度快照 means organic search result.
2. All paid search results will be placed before the organic search results. That means, if 20 customers buy the same keyword, the first organic search result will be found on page three. The price is based on a bidding process. Not only the CPC but quality factors like landing page evaluation will influence the position as well.
3. The ads in the right column are no CPC-based ads. They are fix-priced for one whole year. Position no. 1 to no.3 have the same price and rotate among each other. Position no. 4 to no.10 are cheaper than no.1 to no.3 and rotate as well. If the position is already booked, you have to reserve and wait respectively until it will become free. There is no possibility to get out of the contract before this one year ends.
4. Once a while you might notice one or two ads with a blue banner on position one and/or two. It looks similar to Google’s blue banner, but in fact it has a totally different meaning: if you search for a keyword and there are no paid results for that keyword because no advertiser has booked it, Baidu will display ads that are similar to the keyword you entered. Example: you enter ‘keyword advertising’ but there are no paid results, so baidu will show two ads for the keyword ‘advertising’ with a blue background.

Last but not least, some examples prices for the right column (as of 2007/11/15):

手机 (cell phone) 1.056.700 RMB/year
广告 (marketing) 13.000 RMB/year
汽车 (car) 117.600 RMB/year
美容 (cosmetics) 193.600 RMB/year
电脑 (computer) 16.400RMB/year