I often get the questions from clients whether to focus on Google or Baidu for their China online campaigns. My answer is a mix of both depending on the target audience; however this is a bit superficial; so let’s go deeper.

Hands down, Baidu is more popular in China then Google; but to define how this benefits marketers, we need to look at who is searching for what in each search engine; as we’re not looking for popularity and non-relevant clicks and inquires; rather we’re really looking for where our likely target audience will gather.

Google vs. Baidu: Which one’s more popular?

The vast majority of Chinese prefer using Baidu to Google (52.1% vs. 32.8%). But before you begin planning your marketing campaign based on that factoid, consider this:

In 2003 a CNNIC survey found that 49.1% users searched the web, while 55.8% of users searched for MP3s. For Google, 61.7% of users searched the web, while only 11.9% searched for MP3s. That means over half of all Baidu searches are for illegally downloading MP3 music files.

So one reason that Baidu is so loved by the Chinese is that it is not held to the strict legal standards of its western competitors; for a typical marketing campaign, the popularity of Baidu vs. Google may largely be irrelevant.

Search results page scanning.

When looking at scanning heat maps, one can see that for Google, the majority of the scanning happens at the top left corner of the results; this means Google is doing a good job at displaying relevant results.

When viewing Baidu, we see the scan appearing throughout the page, while Google users will seldom venture past the 3rd highest result, Chinese users are more likely to click lower results or even go to the 2nd and 3rd page looking for results.

Why?

Part of the reason is that Baidu hides its sponsored listings within its top organic results. The Chinese searchers know this and generally do not trust the first few results, leading them to scan further down the page.

Another reason is that Chinese characters take a long time to type when using a western keyboard. Therefore it’s sometimes easier to type in part of the entry, search, and then click relevant suggestions featured at the bottom of the page - this is actually faster than typing in the entire search query.

This then leads to a general scanning of the entire page, but doesn’t necessarily lead to additional interaction with the lower ranked organic listings.

Phonetic search: Is it easier to find Chinese terms in Baidu?

Some arguments state that Baidu has a better way of displaying Chinese search terms. Chinese characters are basically a series of pictures, each single character able to have many different meanings based on characters surrounding it. Therefore, it gets pretty tricky for a search engine to display the appropriate search results when it needs to compare the words surrounding the search term to adequately supply the correct listings.

I guess this is valid, but then why does Google satisfy better on pure satisfaction and relevancy? When we measure pure information related searches (and take out the MP3 searches) we find that Google provides better results in Chinese.

Baidu’s competitive advantage.

Baidu’s top spot among Chinese can likely be attributed to 3 factors:

1. The MP3 Effect; as discussed above;

2. Stability Issues; Google.com isn’t as stable in China as it is in the West, and the Chinese government has been known to redirect traffic from Google.com to Baidu.com;

3. Chinese nationalism; Baidu is from China, the word “bai du” refers to a poem written in the Song Dynasty about searching for beauty among chaos, and its CEO is the personification of young success and revitalization of the economy. Basically if you’re Chinese, it just feels better to use Baidu, regardless of the search results.

How is this relevant for marketers?

Well as I stated above, it’s best to use a mix of both search engines when planning a campaign; but general rule here is that if you’re targeting businesses and students (target group require relevant results) then it’s better to go with Google, and if you’re targeting the vast majority of Chinese, then it’s better to go with Baidu.

However when compensating for the MP3 factor, most of the numbers tend to even out; they are close enough to make the differences negligible.

The best long-term strategies tend to remain remarkably similar; use SEO and have value-added information on your website (not just a sales conversion funnel) so it’s more likely users will visit your site hunting for information.

Short term strategies including PPC and other forms of online advertising, however, require a lot more understanding of the subtle differences between the engines.

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