21-year-old student Wei Zexi, who was diagnosed with rare form of cancer in 2014, had died on 12 April following a controversial and ultimately unsuccessful treatment that he found online through Baidu search. Before his death, Wei publicly criticized Baidu for selling search listings for medical information to the highest bidder misleading him and his family of the treatment’s effectiveness. 

Early this week, Cyberspace Administration of China has published a statement saying that Baidu’s search results appeared to have “had an impact” on student Wei’s choice of treatment calling on the company to overhaul its practices.

Baidu responded by saying that it would “implement all the changes demanded by investigators, and deeply reflect on its shortcomings”. It has already removed all paid advertisement for “cancer treatment” (“癌症治疗”) and related searches showing only news and organic results.

Here are the 5 ways Baidu scandal is going to affect marketers in China

#1: It is likely that the new account approval process will be taking longer and may require more supporting documents. All medical ads will certainly come under more scrutiny and the effect may spill over to the related fields such as health food and supplements, medications and general health care providers. Ads from medical institutions not approved by the government would probably be rejected outright.

#2: Regulators already demand more visual distinction for Baidu paid ads vs. organic results. Currently, it is often hard to tell the difference as ads are indicated only by a word “advertisement” (推广) at the bottom. Baidu is likely to follow Google in the way paid results are shown. This is how it currently looks on Baidu vs. Google:

#3: Critics point out that Baidu mostly ranks ads based on a particular advertiser spending level rather than ads quality and credibility. Although, Baidu quality score includes several factors, spending is probably the biggest one. Following the scandal, now Baidu promises to rank ads based on credibility, although who and how is going to determine that is much less clear.

#4: Another demand from the regulators is related to how much paid ads vs. organic results should occupy the first results page. Often times and for popular terms, Baidu first page is almost entirely populated by the paid results. This resulted in marketers seeing better ROI from Baidu PPC campaigns vs. investing in SEO. Now, Baidu is urged to limit paid search results to only about 30% of the page real estate with the rest going to organic results. This will probably make investment in Baidu SEO a more productive strategy than it used to be.

#5: Cost of Baidu pay-per-click is already higher than Google across almost all the industries and is now likely to increase further. Medical ads provided 20-30% of Baidu search revenues and the company will probably try to make up for the shortfall – their shares already fell by 5% this week following this  recent Baidu scandal. Also, bids are bound to increase as more advertisers will  now be competing for less available space on each search page (see above).

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The post 5 Ways Baidu Scandal Is Going To Affect Marketers in China appeared first on Sampi.co.

First of all,  Baidu.com is by far the most poular search engine in China with somewhere between 60 to 80% of the search engine market. With Google at only around 3% and Yahoo with Bing at ~0.5% each of the entire market, Baidu is clearly a place to be for a business seeking to reach Chinese audience.

One crucial prerequisite is required to start PPC campaign on Baidu is having your site written in Simplified Chinese. It also has to be optimized for the Chinese keywords that you are going to use for your campaign.

Second prerequisite is having your Chinese business properly registered as you will have to provide your business license in order to open Baidu PPC account. If the name on a business license is that of a foreigner, he/she will also be required to provide a passport. All the documents, including your passport, have to be translated to Chinese by a professional translation company. You will also be required to sign and seal the contract with Baidu.

Chinese websites tend to be very link-heavy, so, ideally,  navigation buttons and links should be able to take your visitor to every corner of your site directly from the landing page.

If it wasn’t enough, the deposit payment has to be arranged through a local Baidu representative by cash. As of now, they don’t accept credit cards and any form of online payments. Why they make it so complex? Probably, such procedure is required in order to comply with the government regulations that are designed to impose a certain degree of control over information available through search engines in China.

Given the complexity of opening an account, I would advise to hire a local expert to get you set up. There are number of companies and freelancers who provide this type of service.

Next, your website must be optimized for your target visitors and be informative enough for them to stay on your page long enough. Chinese websites tend to be very link-heavy, so, ideally,  navigation buttons and links should be able to take your visitor to every corner of your site directly from the landing page.

If you intend to sell products directly from your site, it helps to have a live chat option that is common on Chinese e-commerce site. Chinese consumers like to communicate in real time with sales representatives, so having such capability on your site is a good investment.

Now a bit about how your name will be shown in the results. In the past, all the paid search results were displayed first before the organic ones. In the recent years, Baidu started to follow Google’s model with PPC results on the top and on the bottom as well as in the right column with organic ones in between.

Below is the example of Baidu search results. The PPC results are those in the red frames, at the top, bottom and right. Organic (or free) results are shown in the green frame:

The results in the right column are based on the annual subscription at fixed price, the top 3 spot being the most expensive, followed by the next 3 spots and so on. The search  results in each of the 3 spot slot are shown in different order every time the results are reloaded.

In conclusion, while Baidu PPC campaign is similar to Google, the process of opening an account and setting it up is much more complicated. This is besides the fact that you need a local business registration and having your site available in Chinese and optimized to Chinese language keywords. I would strongly advise to hire a local help to get your Baidu PPT campaign setup properly and going smothly.

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