Google's dominance in the search engine market seems unchallenged. Combining its search engine with a powerful advertising network and numerous other services has secured the Mountain View-based company a stable leadership position, to such an extent that it's difficult to imagine online marketing without Google today.
Of course, despite its dominant position, Google isn't the only competitor in the digital arena. You can read more about products like Microsoft's Bing, the anonymity-focused DuckDuckGo, or Russia's Yandex in a separate article on our blog: search engines other than Google . However, the world's largest search engine has another rival, and a very strong one at that, albeit one focused on a different geographic and cultural region: the Chinese search engine Baidu.
Baidu – the Chinese Google, a giant from the Land of Thriving Technology
Founded at the turn of the century (January 1, 2000, to be precise), Baidu was among the top ten most popular websites globally in 2021. According to various estimates, the Chinese search engine handles around 3,3 billion searches per day —not much less than Google, which handles around 3,5 billion.
Despite the global scale of the modern internet, this service is essentially unknown in Europe and the Americas. This isn't the case here – Baidu products are available almost exclusively in Chinese, and in the vast majority of cases, it's impossible to use them even in English. You can, of course, use a prosthesis in the form of a Google Translate plug-in for web browsers , but it won't be as effective as the native language version.
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Baidu's popularity in China (~72% market share) stems not only from its strong local presence but also from political considerations. Many Google services have been blocked in China due to the country's information rationing and regulations known as the "Great Firewall of China." While Baidu's news service enjoys a good rapport with the Chinese government, Google has been marginalized to around 2% of its market share. The close cooperation with Beijing has resulted in, for example, Baidu's ban in India – the company's services have been unavailable in India since August 2020 due to the conflict between the neighboring countries.
→ E-commerce trends – examples from China – read the article
Despite its intended distinctiveness from Western services, Chinese-language Baidu is undoubtedly a company not to be taken lightly in the online marketing industry. The company employs nearly 50,000 people, focused on nearly 50 services —many of which are almost exact equivalents of Google's systems. The company is listed on the Nasdaq stock exchange and was the first Chinese company to be included in the Nasdaq-100, a list of the largest non-financial companies.
Selected Baidu vs Google services
In addition to its search engine, Baidu offers dozens of other services. Among them, it's particularly worth mentioning:
- Baidu Maps – Google Maps equivalent, limited to the Chinese region and adapted for Baidu;
- Baidu Tuiguang (sometimes called Baidu Ads) – advertising system;
- Baidu Tongji – an analytical module for websites in Chinese with similar functionality to Google Analytics – for website owners, Baidu also provides the Baidu Webmaster Tools suite;
- Baidu Wangpan – 2 TB cloud storage;
- Baidu Baike – online encyclopedia (in Chinese, of course);
- Baidu Translate – real-time translation service offering around 200 languages;
- Baidu Anti-Virus i Baidu Safety Center – antivirus service;
- Baidu Browser – a web browser based on the Chromium engine – the same as Chrome and Microsoft Edge;
- Baidu Statistics Search – statistical data provided by the Chinese government;
- Baidu News – a kind of information service, a news aggregator divided into categories.
Dynamic development of the services offered
Baidu is devoting a significant portion of its investment to machine learning and artificial intelligence development. This is also the result of a broader strategy – according to a Deloitte report, the global AI sector grew at a rate of 22,6% annually from 2015 to 2020, while in China this figure was over 44%. We can certainly expect Baidu to continue to develop as a massive technology and marketing platform in the coming years.
Curiosity
Baidu does not have a meta description set in Google :
The most popular search engine about Chinese search engine
Baidu is China's largest and most popular internet search engine. Founded in 2000, it is often called the "Chinese Google" due to its dominant position in the local market.
In China, access to Western platforms, including the Google search engine, is blocked by the so-called Great Firewall of China. As a result, Baidu is the absolute leader, handling the vast majority of search queries from Chinese internet users and serving as a key tool for acquiring local customers.
While the interfaces of both search engines are similar, Baidu is 100% optimized for Mandarin and the specifics of Chinese culture. Furthermore, Baidu heavily favors its own services and platforms in its search results (such as Baidu Baike, the equivalent of Wikipedia, and Baidu Tieba, a social media platform).
Baidu SEO differs from Western standards. The most important requirements are:
- The website must be translated into Simplified Chinese by a native speaker (Baidu is poor at translating other languages).
- The website should be hosted on a Chinese server (hosted in mainland China).
- It is necessary to have an ICP (Internet Content Provider) license, issued by the Chinese government, which legalizes the operation of the website on the Chinese internet.
Yes. Baidu has its own advertising system (equivalent to Google Ads) that operates on a PPC (Pay-Per-Click) model. It offers extensive targeting options and is one of the most effective ways to quickly reach Chinese consumers with products or services.
Summary
The above article covers the following topics:
- Baidu, a Chinese technology giant founded in 2000, handles approximately 3,3 billion search queries daily and has a 72% share of the Chinese search engine market.
- Comparison of the main services of Baidu and Google: Baidu Maps, Baidu Tuiguang as an advertising system, Baidu Tongji as analytics, Baidu Wangpan with 2 TB of cloud space and other tools such as encyclopedia, translator and antivirus.
- Dynamic development of AI and machine learning at Baidu, supported by the Chinese AI market growing at a rate of 44% annually compared to 22,6% globally in 2015-2020.
