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China search engines



As promised in previous articles , today we will talk about the Chinese search engine market and its main players, and also touch on the features of Chinese SEO. Based on my research for a single investment fund, as well as experience and expert opinions in this area.

Chinese search engines


First, consider the main players in this market. The last few years, the market structure has not changed much, we can say that the market is divided between the “monopolist” Baidu, which occupies two thirds of the “pie”, and all the rest. By 2013, the situation was as follows:
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Youdao

A small search engine from the large Internet portal NetEase (网易, 163.com). It began as an online dictionary with offline versions for PCs and phones. I personally did not see living people who use this search engine, but the box at 163.com was the first email for many Chinese people. Now NetEase is also known for its online games. Most likely the traffic is taken from these main areas of the company. Previously, Youdao was a partner of Google, until the latter was thrown out of the Chinese market. Now Qihoo.com has become a partner, but for now you have not been affected by the share of Youdao.

Yahoo.cn

Long-suffering Yahoo. It all started with attempts to become a media portal, but until 2013 only the search survived (more recently, mail and music service were turned off). As you know, in strategic partners is Alibaba. At the same time, there is no particular active action by the Alibaba Group to promote it. But who knows, maybe this is a “black horse”? It seems, if desired, Ma Yun 1 can pull out Yaha at least in the Top-5.

Bing.cn

Relatively young search engine for the Chinese market, behind which stands Microsoft. Nevertheless, even the presence of such support did not give Bing a shot. The quality of the search in Chinese is disgusting. Even local representatives of the company say that Bing has a chance to occupy a narrow niche of English search for Chinese users (hinting that Baidu is looking bad in English). Nevertheless, some experts say that Microsoft has the leverage to quickly change the situation by moving the search engine through its products (for example, through Internet Explorer).

Google.cn



About the Google conflict with the Chinese authorities, and its subsequent collapse, a lot has been said and written. The search engine continues to lose its share in the Chinese market. According to my fellow experts, now Google in China is used by: a) “geeks” and people working in international trade; b) to advertise adwords / adsense and attract foreign customers; c) part of Android phone users (mobile search market share - 7.5%).

Will the situation be corrected soon? It’s hard to say, but for the time being I don’t recommend my clients to pay attention to Google for promotion on the Chinese Internet.

Soso.com

The search engine from the Internet giant Tencent (腾讯), the creator of the popular messenger QQ and WeChat (微 信), the social network QQ Zone, QQ Games and many other projects. With the same products comes the main traffic. Until 2009, I used Google search technology, now all references to this have been removed. In the mobile search takes the second place (14-15%).

Sogou.com

The third most popular search engine in China. He is owned by a major Internet portal Sohu (搜狐), and the aforementioned Ma Yun (he owns 16% of shares) invested in it. Quickly scored its share due to Sohu products, including: Sogou Input (搜 狗 输入 法) - smart hieroglyphic input system, and secure browsers based on Chrome and IE. But the most interesting thing that rumors about the purchase of Sogou by Qihoo, the owner of “search engine number 2”, were recently confirmed.

So.com

And here is the proof that even on such a monopolized search engine market as the Chinese one can break through, having ingenuity and “little” money. And, although the company is surrounded by numerous scandals about the “impure” game with competitors and investors, the winners are not judged. Their search engine So.com entered the arena in 2012, and now it owns 17% of the market. How did this happen?

The search engine founder, Qihoo 360 (奇 虎 360), is a software developer known for its anti-virus products, mobile application store and numerous add-ons. But most importantly, their software is aimed at a multimillion audience of owners of pirated copies of Windows in China. The “360” programs allowed installing OS updates, bypassing authentication, and made the computer relatively safe by replacing IE6 with its Safe Browser. Naturally, with these add-ons, the Qihoo site became the default page, and with it the main search. It is not surprising that 80% of search traffic on Qihoo comes from applications (browser and toolbar), and only 20% directly from so.com and other channels.

Now Qihoo continues to grow, cooperates with Google and Nokia in the field of mobile search and plans to enter the markets of other countries (several months ago, we actively hired foreign employees to the company). And after buying a competitor Sogou, you can expect an increase in the share in China by another 8-10%.

Baidu.com

And finally, the main dish is Baidu.com. According to various estimates, it is used by 65 to 80% of Internet users in China. The history and description of all web services of the company deserves a separate article. So, only in the field of search they have more than a dozen products (and also their projects in Japan and Indonesia). And it will not be a big mistake to say that the whole “Chinese SEO” is twisted around Baidu. Therefore, I propose to complete this description of the players and go on to the story about the features of search engine optimization in China.

SEO in China: Baidu Indexing


A few tips for quickly getting the site to the Baidu index:

Make sure you have high quality

And now the details:

In previous articles, it has already been said that Baidu is an order of magnitude worse at indexing sites located on foreign servers. The official position is as follows: Baidu indexes and then ranks sites by numerous parameters, including the speed of server response. And for many, it is no secret that in China a small channel has been allocated for foreign traffic. Therefore, if you want to get into the index faster and be higher - move the site to China, or at least to Hong Kong.

Get an ICP license for the site. Officially: its presence does not affect indexing. But in practice, ICP helps Baidu solve a good site or a bad one faster (if approved by the government = good), and puts it faster / higher.

Positioning and ranking in Baidu

In short, it can be said that, as with other search engines, many parameters are evaluated: the uniqueness and quality of the content, the number of external links and the rating of the referring sites, the "density" of keywords, and so on. Perhaps, only with density, the situation here is somewhat freer: if Google / Yandex for a large number of keywords per “centimeter” of text can be obtained “banhammer”, then Baidu looks at it easier. And the most important role in ranking is played by link-building and the number of external links.

Immediately it is worth noting that SEM and paid advertising in Baida (Baidu PPC, 百度 推广) do not affect indexing / positioning. But since Baidu has no conscience and advertising space is on top of the issue, below, on the side and in the middle (quite recently they didn’t differ much from the usual results, but now they have a different background), it’s very important not to miss this moment. You can invest in SEO hundreds of thousands of yuan and be in the first "organic" place, but this will be the fifth (and recently the tenth) place on top of the paid results. Some experts say that 80% of users do not know that these are paid results. And those who know, by inertia, click in the middle or in the lower results. But it was not there, even the lower results can be bought.

If we compare the "heat map" (heat map) of the Google and Baidu results pages, we will see that Google actively clicks on the first three lines. In Baidu, however, a large number of clicks are spread over the center and bottom lines.



In general, Baidu has long been reputed on the one hand by an active pro-government censor, and on the other by a monopolist in search, whose issuance is sold by more than half. Now “geeks” mostly resent this issue, but discontent is also growing among ordinary Internet users. Baidu is trying to slowly improve his reputation, but competitors do not miss the opportunity to play on this fact.

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Here, perhaps, we will stop and leave room for the second part about SEO and SEM in China (for the hub-offtopic). I look forward to your comments, additions and questions, which we will answer in the next part.

Notes


  1. Ma Yun (马云, Jack Ma) is the founder of the Chinese ecommerce giants Alibaba.com, Taobao, Tmall, the Alipay payment system and many other projects.

Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/191822/

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