by Alice Wansi Chen
Baidu is the dominant search engine in China. It provides users with a wide range of results and information, including multimedia content (MP3 music, movies, etc,), and displays it in a well written Chinese language. Baidu is also the first to offer WAP and PDA-based mobile search in China; however, there are a few things you may still be unaware of. Below I have listed five things you may or may not know about Baidu.
- Pin-yin. Pin-yin is the standard Romanization system for Mandarin, and the most dominant Chinese language used in China. Baidu provides “pin-yin” search that allows users to type in Chinese keywords using the English alphabet. This feature allows users to bypass the English, Chinese, and Pin-yin input options, because Baidu recognizes each of these formats already. Additionally, it helps those users who may not know the traditional written form of the Chinese word, and instead can type it in English or pin-yin. You don’t need to optimize your site in pin-yin. However, Baidu could figure out and rank your Chinese keywords for the pin-yin search.
- Chinese Handwriting Input Method. Baidu recently started to provide a handwriting input method, which allows users to search the web via handwriting Chinese characters using their mouse.
- Quantity Over Quality. At this point, Baidu is not as sophisticated as Google when it comes to figuring out link relevance, therefore, Baidu heavily depends on the link quantity instead of quality to make a decision for ranking. Thus, there are still a lot of link farm issues existing.
- Linking is Not Always King. In Google, external linking is considered king. However, Baidu considers various elements in your site besides external links to decide your ranking; for example, internal linking, information architecture, keyword density, etc.
- Language. Most of the search queries inputted in Baidu are Chinese, while Google China has a higher percentage of English queries. This means that if you want to optimize for the Chinese market, the Google keyword tool is not localized enough. Actually, Baidu provides some useful tools for your Chinese keyword research. For example, Baidu Index is a tool that provides insight on the search queries in Chinese.
Baidu optimization is less standardized than Google, since it keeps improving its algorithm. Because of this, it’s extremely important to be aware of the latest updates, and constantly refine your site to meet Baidus ever-changing standards.
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