Baidu resumes search engine wars with a couple of international efforts, which have no tantrums or any major announcements coming along. Chinese search engine Baidu chose a Singapore-based partner for extending its reach globally. However, from their own end, they are no short of making the best efforts work for them. They have a brand new website named Baidu International and with it a dedicated Twitter account.
With their Twitter account, they have been following people who are in the search industry. The followed users would even see their profile to be well-known as it states it is “Baidu International, the trading name of China Search Int (CSI), a Baidu partner focused on helping companies access consumers through advertising on Baidu.” The company’s main aim here is to increase participation from advertisers, who wish to extend their reach to the Chinese market.
In September, the company moved into the territories of Egypt and Thailand. At the same time, they even made a value added addition to their presence in Japan and China. The bottom line of their approach has been to move abroad and look out for potential advertisers, who would be interested in buying paid search and “Brand Zone” advertising. Baidu makes it clear on its Product and Services page, wherein it details the two options for advertisers to choose from, it they intend to work with Baidu.
Of the available options, Brand Zone is a product to be talked about as there is a hint of similarity between the Brand Zone, offered by Baidu and banner ads which are placed above the results pages prevalent on early search engines. An important point to note here for the advertisers would be to see whether these spots garner high click-through rates, given they charge by click.
The site even has detailed the fact as it explains:
“Brand Zone offers a unique opportunity for brands to advertise in China with Baidu. Brand Zone allows an advertiser to bid on certain, core brand related keywords, and when a consumer searches for these words, both text and graphical advertising units are served.
This ad-unit controls the top of the search results page and delivers huge brand impact and a significant increase in click traffic.
The only equivalent to this on other search engines would be returning multiple paid and natural results at the top of Google, along with a graphical advertisement when a consumer searched for your brand/products. The results are truly amazing. Search for major brands such as BMW, Mercedes, Hilton, Chanel and others and see the power of this ad-unit.”
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Apart from its products and services, Baidu was boastful to note that the population of China counts for 1.3 billion, out of which 50 million+ are online. Out of the online population in China, 429,300,000 are on Baidu. This point has been made in defense of its claim that it has more than 83% market share. It further notes that Baidu generates over 1 billion search queries daily, which is more than 4 times its nearest competitor.