Search Engine Usage & Social Networking in China the Focus of Reform’s First Search Review

Jan. 7, 2010 - PRLog -- With this series, Reform has compiled expert insight and opinion from various sources on international search market trends and search engine product information. The Reform International Search Review came about because Reform realised that while plenty of stats and research can be found on the UK or USA search markets, information on other international search markets beyond these countries can sometimes be hard to find.  This is especially the case when you go beyond Europe and North America, towards countries where search marketing is either at an earlier stage of evolution – or simply quite different than the western approach.

The first issue in the series of International Search Reviews focuses on the search market in China. Many international businesses have kept a watchful eye on this market, as it is now the country with the most internet users in the world.  The research team at Reform goes beyond looking at the general search engine market share in China (though most places still cite Baidu as the leading search engine there), but also at how the current strategies of the major players there unfolded in 2009, along with predictions on where the market may lead in 2010.  

Big changes occurred in late 2009, especially in how Baidu set up their results in both paid and natural search.  In paid search, they realised that the market share lead that they had was not as big as the revenue share lead should have been – and revised their paid search algorithm and configuration to what is known as “Phoenix Nest”, which is greatly influenced by Google AdWords’s set up.  

Baidu also made it’s natural results more open to websites, as until this year – a portion of the natural and paid results were in fact actually paid placements and flat rate ads.  Of course, there are still outside factors too – and Google has to deal with several additional factors in China, including downtime, possibly in part due to “big brother”.

Reform also looks at the state of Social Network usage in China, as profitable sites such as QQ and Baidu Tieba solve the equation that sites like Facebook and MySpace have tried to solve – and how both search and social networking marketing works completely different in many ways to western markets.  In many cases, while western marketers try to get eastern markets to adjust to their methodologies, the exact opposite is happening too.  Truth is, there is some compromise ahead, as we progress further into a global marketplace.

Contact Reform if you want to be added to the list for future International Search Review papers.  The next one will feature another Asian market, and is set for release later this month.  Find out more at
http://www.reformdigital.com/research/international-searc...
or contact Reform at info AT reformdigital.com

# # #

Digital consultancy business, focused on continual improvement and in delivering the best ROI for our clients. Services include search marketing, along with evaluating the use of technology and finance, plus operational workflows within a company.