When considering China SEM strategy, Baidu is usually the one that gets most attention from marketers. It is primarily due to its larger reach – by different accounts, Baidu holds between 60 to 70% of China search engine market. On the other hand, Baidu doesn’t enjoy the same type of dominance as Google does in the West. It is also becoming more difficult every year for Baidu to maintain its lead as it has to fight off increasingly aggressive and sophisticated competitors.

One such powerful competitor is 360 Search which has been a solid number two in the market for the last few years. By different estimates, it currently holds 25-30% of Chinese search engine market share. Its main search so.com, is the 4th most visited website in China (after baidu.com, qq.com and taobao.com).

360 Search covers about two thirds of all Chinese internet users and claims to develop its own unique ranking algorithms. It is also the first Chinese search engine to offer online fraud compensation.

Search engine is not the only product of 360 Search. The company also owns several popular internet properties such as 360 directory – the most visited portal in China, China’s number one Android app store, China’s second most popular internet browser and the most popular anti-virus program.

It also produces its own mobile phone brand, car accessories as well as various electronic devices ranging from security cameras to smart watches.

Why 360 Search SEM can be an effective addition to China marketer’s toolbox?

First of all, in general, 360 Search keyword bidding price tends to be considerably lower than Baidu’s. It is not unusual to see 360 Search bidding price to be half of that of Baidu’s for the same keyword.

Second, marketers report that, on average, the conversion rate is about 15% higher with 360 Search vs. Baidu. This fact alone is a good enough reason to include 360 Search in the overall marketing strategy alongside, or sometimes, instead of, Baidu.

Third reason why some marketers may favor 360 Search SEM is the fact that it is easier for a foreign company to register an advertiser’s account with this search engine compared to Baidu. Although, all Chinese search engines have to follow the same rules set by China’s internet authorities and require similar paperwork, processing of an application with 360 Search is often faster and more straightforward.

When it comes to initial costs, 360 Search and Baidu also differ significantly. Unlike Baidu, 360 Search doesn’t charge account setup fee. However, the initial ad spend deposit requirement is higher compared to Baidu: it is currently set to minimum RMB 30,000 vs. Baidu’s 5,000 (it is negotiable in some cases). On the other hand, there is no time limit on how long it should take to spend that budget on the ads.

Finally, the campaign management backend is also somewhat easier to navigate compared to Baidu’s (although both are only available in Chinese).

In subsequent posts, we are going to take a closer look at different 360 Search marketing options.

Interested in reaching millions of Chinese with 360 Search SEM?

We can help!

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360 Search PPC options

Despite holding a smaller search engine market share compared to Baidu, 360 Search PPC can often be a more cost effective option thanks to considerably lower keywords bidding price. The bids for identical keywords are often as low as half of Baidu’s which gives marketers more mileage on a given budget by running 360 Search PPC campaign vs. Baidu.

Although Baidu is still the largest search engine, it is nowhere near Google style market dominance in western market, accounting for somewhere between 60 to 70% of the market.

360 Search market share takes the major part of what is left plus there is around 16% user overlap between the two search engines. Also, 360 Search is often considered a bit more “hip” compared to Baidu and, as a results, tends to attract younger and well educated user base with more purchasing power. This also explains the fact that, on average, 360 Search PPC campaign conversion rate is about 15% higher than Baidu’s.

In addition to search ads, 360 Search also offers its own display network where text or banner ads are served on relevant sites and apps. Display network marketing is an effective re-marketing (re-targeting) tool and is designed to serve ads to users who have already visited a specific sites, have run similar searches or have purchased certain products.

Based on ad settings, 60 Search PPC results can be displayed in two formats: as site links with thumbnails (2-比翼) or text links (1-搜索文字链):

When users search for physical products, the results can also be displayed as product links using 360 Search PPC option called “fengwu” (3-凤舞):

When it comes to results display, 360 Search offers additional options similar to Baidu brand zone: brand express (4-品牌直达), brand sunrise (5-品牌日出) and premium zone (6-品牌甄选):

360 Search display network allows effective remarketing to users who have either visited a site or searched for a similar term. It is typically done by placing ad banners on relevant site like shown below (7-横幅):

Interested in reaching millions of Chinese with 360 Search SEM?

We can help!

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This post is the first one in the upcoming three part series covering basic market research in China.

Baidu Search

Due to a number reasons, the familiar digital marketing tools, which are mainly run by Google in the Western markets, are not available in China. Google search engine market share in China has fallen below 1% this year and all the Google services, such as Google docs, Google maps, Google analytics etc., have also become blocked from access. This fact alone is making life quite difficult not only for marketers but for regular citizens and businesses.

Luckily, there is an alternative and it is Baidu (baidu.com), the largest Chinese search engine with about 60% market share.

In fact, just a few years ago, Baidu was much more dominant reaching about 80% of the total search market. Since then, other popular services became more competitive and managed to grab larger market share away from Baidu. Those platforms are 360 Search (haosou.com) and Sogou (sogou.com) holding somewhere around 30% and 15% respectively as of the end 2014.

Here I will be mainly focusing on Baidu but, in principle, other search engines are fairly similar and can also be used for the purpose of basic market research.

Just like with Google, your basic research can start with a simple search term of a product translated to Chinese. Now, a word of warning, I strongly advise against using Google Translate or other machine translation program for that. You must find a native speaker to verify the term that you are interested in.

Let me give you an example. Suppose you are interested to search for the term “sunglasses”. Here is what Google Translate would return:

Unfortunately, even though the translation may technically be correct, no one in China actually uses the term太阳镜.

The proper term for sunglasses is太阳眼镜 and this is what you should be using for Baidu search. Once again, Google Translate cannot be relied upon even for a translation of simple keywords, let alone complex “long tail” ones.

Anatomy of a typical Baidu search results

Here is an example of a Baidu search results for the term “sunglasses” (太阳眼镜). Paid results are typically grouped at the top and on the right panels like in the example below:

Compared to a typical Google search results page, with Baidu, it is somewhat harder to tell the difference between paid and organic results. In fact, the only thing that indicates paid ads would be a small word “推广” at the bottom right.

For popular keywords, there would be very few organic results (if any at all) on the first results page.

Next, you would typically see results from Baidu-owned sites like Baike (equivalent to Wikipedia) or Baidu Zhidao (Chinese “Yahoo answers”).

News related results would be ranked next followed by the results from ecommerce sites. Interestingly, links to the largest ecommerce platforms of Alibaba, Taobao and Tmall, would not be shown at all. This is the result of the fierce competition between Baidu and Alibaba.

Finally, closer to the end of the page in this example, you can finally see a few organic results followed by another block of ads:

What can you learn from Baidu search? First, you can immediately see the level of competition in your intended market. If there are many paid ads, be prepared to compete with those advertisers for the same keywords.

Next, you will be able to learn who the main competitors would be and what they are offering. It’s a good idea to go and see their sites, explore the offers, sales strategies and distribution channels.

Finally, basic search would give you a better sense on whether it would be wise to invest in Baidu pay-per-click (PPC) or SEO to get ranked organically. I’m going to discuss those choices in more details in the future posts.

Stay tuned for the upcoming post on how to perform basic market research with Chinese online marketplaces.

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In the last 3 years, online advertising revenues in China have been growing at the rate of about 40% on year to year basis and show no signs of slowing down in 2015. According to iResearch, it is projected that this year, the total market will reach 216 billion yuan (almost $40 billion), up from 154 billion yuan in 2014.

Advertising with search engines is still the most popular choice (36.6% of the market), followed by ecommerce ads and brand graphic ads (banner advertising) at 24.1% and 17.2% respectively.

In those two categories, the leading providers are Baidu which holds about 60% of search engine market and Taobao, one of the ecommerce properties of Alibaba.

The infographic also features the results of surveys which were intended to find out what type of improvements users would expect in China digital advertising market in the future. One third of the respondents would like see more correlation between the ads and their interests. This further underscores the need for marketers to learn more about their target audience in order to improve their advertising ROI.

Here is the full infographic:

China Digital Advertising Market

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As of August 2014, Baidu still held 54% of the market, 360 Search was at almost 30% and growing with Sogou following the first two with about 15% of the total market:

Baidu market share overall has been surprisingly stable, remaining essentially flat throughout the first half of 2014. However, some figures indicate that the search volumes for videos, images as well as usage of other Baidu search products appeared to be reduced.

360 Search continues gaining popularity and is widely predicted to reach 35% of market share by the end of this year. It also offers lower prices for PPC compared to Baidu and there is an increasing perception that it returns more accurate search results overall.

Sogou is another service that has been showing various degrees of growth in the last year and it seems to firmly occupy the 3rd place in the market.

In terms of user experience, Google and Yahoo were ranked at the bottom, although Baidu wasn’t ranked too high either. According to the surveys by CNZZ.com, Sogou appeared to provide the best user experience. However, thanks to Baidu extensive ecosystem of related products and apps, it was still ranked at the top based on overall score.

Now, a bit about Google. China has been one of just a few countries on the globe where Google’s market share in search engine space remains insignificantly small. Although, the company had a consistent presence on the Mainland since 2005, its market share has been steadily declining. According to the latest data, it was around 1.3% at the beginning of this year, down from just about 2% a year earlier and compared to 12% in August 2012. The number dropped to the record low of 0.34% in August this year, most likely due to recent blocking of Google services in China in the first half of 2014.

These numbers simply mean that there is no point to optimize your site for Google in China or pay for Google AdWords to reach customers here. Baidu still remains the dominant player and should be the first to focus on in your marketing strategy. If 360 Search continues to keep up its good performance so far, it is likely to occupy a more prominent role in the market. The fact that it still offers better pay-per-click rates combined with highly accurate search results, makes this platform to become more attractive for marketers focusing on China.

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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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SEO for Baidu is not just a one time job but, just as in the case of Google, is a continuous effort. Algorithms and weights of various factors change all the time and, in a way, Baidu seems to be following Google’s logic, although with a considerable delay.

Of course, since Baidu targets Chinese audience, it has its own way of doing things in order to stay more relevant both geographically and linguistically. Since Baidu accounts to up to 70% of Chinese search engine market it’s important to understand how it assigns ranking, what factors are considered important and what could be harmful.

The factors below are listed in the descending order of importance to ranking (based on BaiduGuide.com research):

Broad Algorithms Factors

1. Trust and the Authority of the domain;
2. Link Popularity of the domain;
3. On-page keyword usage;
4. Anchor text or external links to the page;
5. Traffic data;
6. Site age and registration data;
7. Social metrics;

On-Page Ranking Factors (Keyword)

1. Keyword use in the title tag;
2. Keyword use in internal link anchor text;
3. Keyword use in external link anchor text;
4. Keyword use in H1 tag;
5. Keyword use in the page URL (pinyin);
6. Keyword use in image alt tag;
7. Keyword use in domain name (pinyin);
8. Keyword use in H2 – H6 tags;
9. Keyword use in meta description tag;
10. Keyword use in image name (pinyin);

On-Page Ranking Factors (General)

1.  Unique content;
2. Domain name age;
3. Sitemaps (XML, video, image);
4. Number of indexed pages;
5. ICP license registration;
6. Site architecture (should be as flat as possible);
7.  Freshness and ratio of the new pages;
8. Ratio of code to text in HTML;
9. Citations of the domain in Baidu Baike;
10. Spelling and grammar mistakes;

Link Popularity Ranking Factors

1. Topical relevance of the external links;
2. Quality of external links;
3. Keyword focused anchor text from external links;
4. Keyword focused anchor text from internal links;
5. Diversity of link sources;
6. Age of external links;
7. Links from trusted domains;
8. Quantity of external links;
9. Keyword focuses internal links;
10. Links for restricted TLDs;

Social Metrics

1. Baidu like data;
2. Baidu share data;
3. Weibo like or share data;
4. Renren.com like or share data;

Geo-Targeting Factors

1. Country code TLDs (.cn ranks higher then .com etc.);
2. Links from targeted country domains (Preference to Mainland China);
3. Geo location and IP address of the domain (preference to Mainland China);

Negative Ranking Factors

1. Frequent server downtime;
2. Malicious hidden texts;
3. Links to low quality sites;
4. Duplicated content;
5. Links from low quality and spam sites;
6. Keyword stuffing;
7. Purchased links;
8. Server response time;
9. Low traffic to the site;

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Interesting numbers that I find quite illuminating: Google accounts for barely over 3% of all the searches in China with Yahoo and Bing hovering  just around half percent.

Notice the stats on the mobile searches growing at 94% rate compared to 20% rate decline in desktop based searches.

Scroll down the map to see more interesting data.

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In this post, I’ve pulled in some resources on how to improve your ranking and what factors affect your site’s placements in the search results.

Submitting your site to Baidu

Submitting your site to Baidu is an important thing to do if your site doesn’t appear in the Baidu’s search engine, i.e., it is not indexed yet. Without submitting your site, the Baidu spiders (computer bots that scour the internet) may not find you and your site will not get indexed.

You can submit your site to Baidu’s open source platform at: http://open.baidu.com

Submitting a sitemap

Like Google, submitting a sitemap to Baidu helps them to find all of the pages on your site.
Their platform for sitemap submission is found at:
http://sitemap.baidu.com

Language

Simplified Chinese is the only language that Baidu will recognize. In order to be properly indexed, your website should be written in it. See my other post on translating your website.

Keywords

Keywords are important in Google, but they are still carry more weight in Baidu. While Google is slowly moving away from its dependence on keywords and anchor text, Baidu still considers these very important.

There is a banned list of keywords that mainly have to do with politics, military, controversial events in Chinese history and even gambling. Never use any of the words on it if you don’t want to run the risk of getting your website banned as well.

Flat Architecture

Due to frequent connectivity problems, Baidu’s crawlers won’t index pages that are too deep in your hierarchy. Keep your website’s architecture flat and accessible.

Quantity over Quality

Google’s frequent updates have ensured that SEO specialists understand the importance of the quality of links over the number of links pointing to their websites. Baidu hasn’t reached that level of sophistication yet – quantity is still more important. Obviously, that means that there are many opportunities for link spamming.

However, over the last year, Baidu has been updating its algorithms to punish lower quality sites.

Anchor Text

Anchor text should of course be in Chinese. They should also match the keywords being used on your website. Baidu is quite strict about this and may penalize sites where the anchor text and keywords are not in sync.

Meta Data

Baidu still relies heavily on meta tags to determine relevance so ensure that your meta tags are optimized. This also includes meta keywords tag since Baidu uses them to some extent still.

Local Domain & Hosting

In comparison to Google, Baidu attaches a not insignificant bonus to .com.cn / .cn domains and websites hosted within the Great Firewall.

China’s .cn domains are administered by the Ministry of Information. This means that unlike buying a typical .com domain, .cn registrations will be manually (as in, by a human) reviewed. There are also licenses you will have to apply for. If you have ever dealt with the government, you know this can take time.

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