But how to find exactly what you need? The answer to this question is search engines. But what if the information we need is in Chinese? When you have a similar question, then it's time to get acquainted with the search engine Baidu!
What is Baidu?
First of all, Baidu ("Baidu" in Russian) is a search engine of Chinese origin. However, Baidu is not an ordinary car, but a rather complex project. In 2000, a search engine was created by the company of the same name, which in a short time (namely, by 2011) took third place in the world. Such indicators once again demonstrate to us how productive the Eastern approach to such projects is.
Truly Chinese spirit and scope
As of today, the share of the search engine Baidu among the total world queries reaches 5.2% and is capable of boasting a huge amount of information - more than 740 million various web pages, 80 million images and 10 million multimedia files.
It should also be remembered that Baidu is considered the national search product. Based on this, as well as due to the good quality of the machine itself, Baidu is considered the undisputed leader in China. By capturing the hearts and minds of the people of China, Baidu has created a very unfavorable atmosphere for a search engine monster like Google. In this connection, Google was forced to leave the Chinese market.
But Baidu is not just a search engine
Baidu provides not only a high-quality search, but also a list of various kinds of services, for example, mail, storage of music and books, and of course, personal maps.
See the world through the eyes of Baidu
There are situations in life in which a person really needs to find out where he specifically stays, or to find the most suitable road from place A to place B. In our time, in order to solve such problems, the services of maps from various companies, such as Google or Yandex, are used. So Baidu does not stand aside from progress. Despite this, there is one special feature in the maps from the search engine Baidu - the colorful style.
The situation in the Chinese market is determined by the division of search engines into two categories: Baidu, which occupies most of the site, and all other services. Let's take a look at the main search engines that are the most popular on the web.
So.com - The search engine has rather conflicting reviews regarding its work, and its path to the status that it has is rather shaky. This service first appeared on the web in 2012 and immediately attracted attention. He gained fame as a resource that conducts unscrupulous activities on the Internet, which determines his dubious biography. However, after all the rumors about the functioning of the system, the service managed to capture 17% of the market.
Sogou.com - The search engine ranks third in the list of the most successful services, and is part of a large-scale project called Sohu. Not so long ago, an official announcement was made about the purchase of a search resource by Qihoo, which also owns another equally popular Chinese search engine.
Soso.com - The system belongs to the founder of the famous QQ and WeChat programs, which are very popular among users of the Republic of China.
It ranks second among the resources used in mobile search services. Note that earlier this system introduced the popular Google site into search, but in 2009 it abandoned this option, after which any mention of a well-known resource was removed.
The search engine had a different look at the time of its creation, and was presented to the attention of users as an online dictionary. The dictionary was available both on a PC and using a mobile version. The Internet portal NetEase, which owns this service, is currently famous for its game developments, from which the main traffic comes. If earlier the service successfully cooperated with the Google website, then after the refusal of the services of a large system by China, all business relations were terminated.
The resource is fairly new, and the main partner is one of the leading products in the network, Microsoft. However, despite the successful cooperation, the service is of little value to Chinese users, and the search is not done in the best way. Although the search in English leaves much to be desired, experts say that thanks to the functionality of Microsoft, the search engine can still shoot.
Baidu has confidently surpassed its competitors. Today it is ranked 1st in China, 8th in North Korea, 10th in Hong Kong, 15th in Japan, 27th in Taiwan and 82nd in the United States. The Baidu search engine is as popular in China as Google is in Europe.
Google competitor from China
Baidu is considered one of the largest Internet companies in the world. It was founded in January 2000 by former students Erik Xu and Robin Lee, who graduated in America. They managed to attract about $ 12 million in investments. Their goal was to create a domestic Internet company that could compete with American "monsters" such as Google, Yahoo and Bing.
The name is literally translated "a hundred times", "a thousand times" or "countless times." It is taken from the last lines of Xin Qingzi's poem "The Green Jade Table at the Lantern Festival." It says: "I searched hundreds of times in the crowd, suddenly turning, she, she is there, in the dim light of a burning candle."
The poem tells about a man who is looking for his jade dream. According to the developers, the Chinese search engine Baidu symbolizes the constant search for the ideal. In this regard, the name of the search engine is sometimes translated as "dream search".
Golden shield
Informally, the project is called "The Great Firewall of China" (a play on words, meaning both the ancient Great Wall of China and as a network firewall). This is a virtual shield that filters Internet content in the PRC. The development of the project continued for 5 years. And at the end of 2003, the "Golden Shield" began its work.
Also, in addition to the "shield", China uses DNS blocking technology. There is a "black list" of sites, access to which is completely closed. Web pages are filtered by keywords that are indirectly or directly related to the state security.
Chinese Baidu, Sogou and Soso are popular search engines not only in their homeland, but also in Europe. The same cannot be said about Google, Bing and Yahoo, which are rapidly losing their leading positions in the PRC.
Achievements
How popular is baidu.com? About 50 thousand Internet users visit it every day. It is in the top 10 most popular and profitable sites on the Internet, second only to such giants as Google, Facebook, YouTube, Yahoo and Wikipedia.
In mid-2006, China's top search engine launched the Baidupedia or Baidu Baike project. In the first 3 weeks, she bypassed the Chinese Wikipedia and became the leader in the country. Baidu's encyclopedia is subject to total censorship, like the search engine itself. At the beginning of 2017, it contains about 14 million articles. In other words, there is more information in Baydupedia than in Russian, English, Chinese and German Wikipedia combined.
In 2013, Baidu, together with the German company Avira, launched its own antivirus program, Baidu Antivirus.
The company's president, Zhang Yaqin, announced his ambitious plan in 2016. In 5 years, he intends to start mass production of cars (self-driving).
Competitors
In the Chinese market, Baidu is undoubtedly the leader. According to experts, it is used by 65% to 85% of the PRC population. But despite such popularity, this "giant" has competitors: So.com, Sogou.com and Soso.com. These Chinese Internet search engines are competing for customers and dreaming of becoming the leader.
So.com was launched 12 years after Baidu and now owns 17% of the market. Owned by Qihoo 360, their software is targeted primarily at owners of "pirated" or illegal copies of Windows in China. 360 programs bypass authentication and allow you to install OS updates.
Qihoo is actively collaborating with Nokia and Google on mobile search and plans to expand into European markets. The company recently bought shares in its rival Sogou, which could increase its market position by 10%.
The Chinese search engine Soso.com is owned by the largest Internet service provider Tencent. The company is the creator of such successful projects as WeChat and QQ messengers, and owns the Riot Games company. In mobile search, it confidently takes the second place (15% of the market).
Foreign search engines in China
The Bing.com system, despite the support of Microsoft, is not popular in the Middle Kingdom. It is used by no more than 1% of the population of the country and only to search for information on English-language resources.
Due to total censorship, the Google.com search engine refused to work in China. In 2010, the company closed its representative office in the country and relocated to Hong Kong. Google's share of the Chinese market has dropped significantly and currently stands at 3%.
With Google's departure, Chinese search engine Baidu has strengthened its position in the domestic market. And with the discovery of the Japanese version, it became the second search engine in the world.
Chinese search engines are almost a separate universe in the world of the Internet. In addition to the fact that they are used by more than 500 million people in China, they are also quite in demand outside of China.
In recent years, the structure of the search engine market has remained almost unchanged: Baidu also remains the main "monopoly", while others occupy it the remainder. For the 4th quarter of 2014, the total revenue in the search engine market was 16.26 billion RMB (renminbi, yuan 人民币 - the Chinese currency), which is 3.7% higher compared to the 3rd quarter. According to research by Enfodesk, total revenue for the full year 2014 increased by 45.2% to RMB 57.14 billion.
Overview of the main search engines of the PRC
1. Baidu
By adopting the experience of competitors and implementing it in Chinese along with its own original solutions, Baidu is ranked third among the most popular search engines in the world. In fact, it is a kind of Google analog, but with less functionality. This search engine has achieved such success thanks to the development of its own services, which reduce to zero the appeal of Chinese Internet users to world portals. For the Chinese government, which censors the entire Internet, this is very beneficial, because the better Baidu copes with the development of analogs to Google services, the less need for the inhabitants of the Celestial Empire to use the world's Internet resources.
2. Sogou.com
Sogou belongs to the Internet portal Sohu, which deals with advertising on sites, the development of multiplayer games and much more. The main web services of the search engine include Sogou Pinyin input (a convenient system for entering Latin characters - pinyin) and Sogou Web Directory (its own directory of sites). No one knows if it will catch up with its eternal competitor - Baidu, but one thing is for sure: Sogou is still the leader among the rest of the Chinese search engines. Some marketers find this search engine very useful because it is very useful. it reaches users from all major cities, but PPC advertising is much lower than Baidu's.
3. So.com
So.com is the brainchild of Qihoo 360, better known for software development with its antivirus products, mobile app store and numerous add-ons. Traffic in web search results from Qihoo partners is relatively low. Analysts explain the rather serious popularity of So.com as follows: when users download pirated versions of Windows, during installation they are prompted to install a browser, in which the default search engine is So.com. In addition, Qihoo makes it possible to update pirated versions of the famous OS.
4. Youdao.com
Youdao is the development of the well-known Internet company NetEase. It is she who provides the relative popularity of this search engine. It was once a well-known postal service among Chinese users, but now the main traffic of the NetEase portal is associated with online games. In addition to searching for news, music, pictures and blogs, Youdao has its own Chinese-English dictionary. Previously, web search was associated with the capabilities of Google, but now Qihoo has become a partner of NetEase, which has its own, quite popular search engine.
Foreigners for Chinese
Access to a number of foreign sites from the territory of the PRC is limited within the framework of the "Golden Shield" project. Web pages are filtered by public security keywords and a blacklist of site addresses. Foreign search engines operating in China, including Google, Yahoo and Bing, similarly filter search results.
1. Google
Google's conflict with the Chinese authorities began when the company refused to operate in a country with such a huge population under conditions of constant censorship. The Chinese government refused to make concessions to the world's largest internet search engine, and in 2010 the company officially closed its China search site. Google has become a de facto foreign site for most of the country's inhabitants by moving to Hong Kong, which is outside the Great Wall. At the moment, upon request, there is an automatic redirection to Hong Kong-based site.
Hong Kong, as well as the special administrative regions of China Aomin (Macau) and the island of Taiwan have the status of a free economic zone of the PRC. Internet restrictions binding on the rest of the country do not apply on their territory.
2. Bing
Even with the support of a corporation such as Microsoft, the Bing search engine failed to win over Chinese users and gain great popularity. At the moment, it is used by about 1% of users of the Middle Kingdom - most often to search for information only for English-language queries. Like all foreign resources available to users from the PRC, Bing is obliged to comply with the requirements of Chinese law and remove certain prohibited materials from the issuance at the request of the authorities.
3. Yahoo
Along with other global Internet giants, the American company Yahoo, faced with fierce competition from local companies and the censorship of the Chinese authorities, announced the gradual curtailment and further termination of its activities in the PRC. Under the pretext of migrating accounts to Alibaba Holding's Alimail, Yahoo confirmed rumors in 2013 that it would end its email service to Chinese users. At the moment, there is an automatic redirect to the Singapore site Yahoo, which is still working.
Chinese censorship is not a hindrance to the growth of Internet users
The number of Internet users continues to grow, and the level of activity is not only not inferior, but in some segments also significantly exceeds the activity of citizens of other states, despite the lack of access to popular international communication services. Unlike other countries, local players are tightly entrenched here. Residents of the Middle Kingdom use both their search engines, mobile networks, and other social services. Will the situation change in the near future? It is difficult to say, but so far it is not recommended to pay attention to foreign search engines for promotion on the Chinese Internet.
Let's say right away that it's not easy after all. And, if you decide to engage in search engine optimization of sites in China, then just be patient. A lot of information with infographics and videos about the Chinese segment of the Internet and search engine optimization of sites in Chinese is here. In this article, we will take a closer look at the applied part of this process.
First of all, you need to understand that when promoting sites in China and in Chinese, we are talking about promotion in simplified characters in Mandarin (Mandarin). Simplified characters are also used in Singapore. Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau all use traditional hieroglyphs. It should be borne in mind that Guangdong Hua is spoken in the Guangdong province of the PRC, Hong Kong and Macau.
Promotion algorithm
- An adapted version for mainland China (PRC).
- ICP license, hosting and domain.
- Semantics, content and on-page optimization.
- Submission to Baidu search engine.
- Off-page promotion.
- Analytics.
Website adaptation before promotion in China
First of all, I would like to draw your attention to a different perception of content, as well as to the placement of blocks. In China, hieroglyphs are used. In order to convey any message, much less morphemes and signs are required. Accordingly, less space is required for blocks with text content. They can be broken down differently or made in the form of longreads with adaptive layout.
Colors, elements, layout, style - everything is arranged differently in China. This has a significant impact on conversions and user retention. Therefore, we strongly recommend that you resort to adapting the site with the help of a local company. Below are some examples of the design of the most popular websites in China, according to Alexa.
Obtaining an ICP license
The most detailed guide to obtaining an ICP license can be found here in English. By the way, there are much more materials on website promotion in English in China than in Russian. Therefore, it is advisable to speak a foreign language. Ideally, of course, learn Chinese, or work closely with native Chinese speakers.
Related article: Design mistakes affecting SEO
ICP license is an official permission to operate in the Chinese segment of the network. It is specially issued by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology of the PRC. It is a digital code of eight characters and is usually located at the bottom of sites. An application for an ICP license can be submitted on the official website of the ministry or through domain registrars.
Proper hosting
The most suitable hosting locations for website promotion in China are Hong Kong or Singapore. In search engines, you can easily find the services you need. Payment is possible by Visa, MasterCard, AliPay, WeChat, PayPal and other methods. We recommend that you immediately foresee the option of possible fast scaling. This is due to the fact that if everything works out well for you, then there can be objectively a lot of traffic by the standards of the CIS.
Some of the popular hosts are: InternetSolutions.Hk, HostSg.Com, WebHost.Hk, SingHost, PacHosting, Hosting.Com.Hk, KowloonHosting, DataPlugs and others. Remember that the availability of Asian sites from the CIS countries is lower than the availability of sites from Europe and America. The same can be said about the availability of CIS sites for Chinese users. If you have a global project, then you can use CloudFlare.
Domain
The reality is that registering domains in the .cn zone for yourself or your company is fraught with some difficulties. Therefore, it is best to register .com domains right away. Domains with Chinese content in gTLDs are reasonably good in Baidu's index and rank well. However, Chinese content may not be enough for high rankings and high search traffic.
Semantic core on hieroglyphs and not only
The easiest way to prepare an initial semantic core in Chinese is to take advantage of the native speakers and guidance from Baidu itself. We also remind you that there are requests in foreign and just Latin.
All requests can be more specific. In addition, there are many ready-made query databases in almost all areas.
To determine key phrases and trends, you can use the index.baidu.com service - there are no exact numbers there, but, nevertheless, there is quite a lot of useful information regarding trends and alternative key phrases. Also from there you can find out the level of competition and peak search periods.
Content for Chinese Websites
Writing content for SEO in Chinese is intimidating to many. But in reality, everything is not so scary. It is fairly easy to find native Chinese speakers on Linkedin and Facebook (despite being blocked in the PRC).
Related article: Criteria for evaluating the quality of SEO texts
Regarding the "great Chinese firewall" of sites in the PRC: many popular sites in the world are blocked, for example, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Google (but Google.Com.Hk is available) and many others. It also carefully filters adult video content and photo sites.
"Golden Shield" (unofficial name - "Great Chinese Firewall" - a play on words from the English. Great Wall of China - Great Wall of China) is a system for filtering Internet content in the PRC. The development of the project began in 1998, and in 2003 it was commissioned throughout the country. "Shield" is a system of servers on the Internet channel between providers and international networks of information transmission, which filters information.
Points to consider when translating into Chinese
- Everything needs to be translated into Chinese: title, meta tags, image names, altas, URLs, and more.
- Important key phrases should be placed as early as possible at the beginning of the headline and sentence.
- Content needs to be broken down into structural elements.
- It is better to add media content with the Chinese language.
- Do not confuse traditional and simplified hieroglyphs.
- If you want to make or post video content, it must be in Mandarin Chinese with captions in simplified characters.
Currently, simplified hieroglyphs are used in Malaysia, Singapore and the mainland of the PRC. Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau continue to use traditional hieroglyphs. English is fairly well spoken in Hong Kong, and Macau is a former Portuguese colony. The writing of traditional and simplified hieroglyphs is quite different, although many are the same. Examples: we (simplified - 我们, traditional - 我們), machine (simplified - 汽车, traditional - 汽車), computer (simplified - 计算机, traditional - 計算機).
Informing search engines about the new address
You can apply to the Baidu search engine here. And here is more information on how to do it correctly.
In addition to Baidu, there are other search engines in China: Soso, Sogou, 360, Youdao, Google.com.hk, Shenma, Easou, Youdau. There are also analogues of blocked resources: video hosting, social networks, etc.
Links for website promotion in China
The link text and the correct sequence of characters in it are important. This is due to the fact that by changing the sequence, you can generally change the meaning of phrases, words and sentences. The same applies to internal linking on the site.
