Baidu, the leading searching engine in China

Baidu is the most used search engine by Chinese Internet users every day, more than 900 million Baidu users
But what is the engine behind the slogan “A stroke of Baidu and you will know everything! »
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Baidu, often referred to as the “Google of China,” remains the dominant search engine in China as of 2024. Its popularity and effectiveness are sustained by comprehensive search services that cater specifically to Chinese language users. Alongside its core search engine, Baidu operates several other websites including:
- Baidu Baike: An online encyclopedia similar to Wikipedia.
- Baidu Tieba: A vast forum platform based on keyword searches.
- Baidu Wenku: A comprehensive resource for finding documents.
- Baidu Music: A streaming service that offers a wide range of music.
- Baidu Map: A detailed mapping service similar to Google Maps.
These platforms together create a robust ecosystem that integrates search, social media, knowledge sharing, music streaming, and geographical navigation services, maintaining Baidu’s status as a tech giant in the Chinese internet space.
All SEOs know Baidu without really knowing it because they ignore the most important point: in most European countries and the USA, natural search traffic is the first lever because the two dominant search engines (especially Google and Bing / Yahoo to a lesser extent) are promoting outgoing natural links to other sites. If the share of PPC was higher, SEO would be a less powerful lever and especially if the results pointed towards search engine’s content, SEO would lose much importance.

Baidu promotes internal group results and lets out little traffic.
Consequence of this: SEO is a much less powerful lever and acquisition strategies are focused on other lever. Thus, the marketplace Tmall, unique in the world, captures over 60% of Chinese ecommerce by itself and realizes itself, more than the turnover of all the US E-Commerce ($ 278 billion against $ 250 billion). In China, it is mainly about the place of Tmall market you have to be well referenced and not on Baidu SEO.
Baidu is the largest Chinese search engine, but not the largest provider of traffic and customers.
But in China, everything goes very fast: between 2012 and 2013, the market share of its young Soso.com competitor would be increased from 2% to 10% of the market according to some studies.
Baidu’s homepage

On Baidu’s homepage you can have a sneak peek of the services provided by the search engine such as the News, the Forum, Zhidao (Wikipedia like platform), Music and Video download, Images, Help Center, Advanced research, Personal space (Something similar to MSN Spaces). You can also turn Baidu as your homepage, have a look at the top researches made in a certain period. Then you have the classical ‘About Us’ interface and the imprints. Finally, directly from the homepage you can access to the Jingjia service, which a service equivalent to Google Adwords).
The first page of the keyword « Bread »
On this page you have, the website’s title and its description, nothing unusual for the moment.. What is different are the top 10 results, they are usually labelled as “Promotional Content” (推广) next to the site’s URL. This is the Jingjia service of Baidu called PPC (Pay per Click) or P4P (Pay for Performance).
If you’re not satisfied, at the bottom of the page are found various keywords, given as suggestions. When click on one of these, a new research is searched. If you click on “more alternatives”, you will have access to a list of the 100 most searched keywords. And if it is not enough precise for you, you can make a research within the research.
« The Hot Zone » (火爆地带) is the zone on the right side of the screen and is where announces are displayed according to your research. You can also have a look on the price of these announces.
The keyword you’ve searched for is marked in red in all the results, on Google the keyword is written in bold.


Advanced search
Baidu is able to locate a certain type site with the “Advanced Search” function, the user can determine geographically among 34 provinces and cities, including Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan. Linguistically, the user has the choice between Traditional Chinese and Simplified Chinese, which generally mark the difference between the sites in Taiwan, Hong Kong and those in mainland China.
Baidu Jingjia (百度竟价) – A media platform dedicated to webmarketers, P4P
This is the advertising system of the search engine Baidu that displays targeted text ads. Advertisers pay when a user clicks on the advertisement as an auction system: the higher the price per click is, the higher the ad is shown. If there is no click, the advertiser pays no advertising costs, it’s a department P4P (pay for performance). Since 11 September 2006, Baidu has added the “intelligent ranking” function to improve the old model in which the price of the keyword was the only factor taken into account for the classification of commercial links. Now, the overall ranking indicator includes not only the price per click, but also the quality of the advertisement. Those considered more relevant by netizens have higher rankings than others.
The procedure of the service
When you subscribe to a Jingjia account, you can submit an unlimited amount of keywords. There is a 2400 Yuans of credit to draft (minimum), if you don’t pay, your account and all of the announces’ information will automatically be deleted after 30 days.
Baidu verifiy the subscription’ infos et and the keywords within 2 days after receiving the payment. If abnormal operation or lack of site content, Baidu will stop the service temporarily. The keywords are effective as soon as they are checked and confirmed. Clicking the ad is 0.30 yuan (equal to about 3 cents).
The « Hot Zone » (火爆地带)
Baidu named the commercial links box on the right of the first page of search results, the “Hot Zone”. It is a measure of promotions targeted to specific keywords purchased by advertisers who pay according to the time and the number of clicks.
The presentation
There are up to 10 ads in the Hot Zone, The results are fixed in relation to keywords that appear in red. The ad does not appear if the keyword is not the one that is bought by the advertiser. The title includes ideograms maximum 12 and 30 in the descriptions.
The ranking is determined according to the will of the advertiser and of the auction. For example, the advertiser decides that the key word “Bread” appears in 3rd place in the Hot Zone, if the 2nd place is not yet sold, the ad will automatically appear on the 2nd place and it will fall on the 3rd when the second is taken. And if the place is already taken, the advertiser must wait for the expiry of that place to buy it. The top three spots are fixed. The 4th to 10th ad appear in turn. The rankings do not change in the same day.
Pricing and conditions
The price is fixed in relation to the different level of Hot Zone and the popularity of the keyword. We distinguish between hot words, popular words and common words. The user can check the price of each keyword at any time. The duration of the ad is one year, we can extend the contract three months before expiration. Below 30 days, it is impossible to extend.
Price examples:
English words | Chinese words | Prices from the 1st to the 3rd place | Price from the 4th to the 10th place |
Cosmetics | 美容品 | 560 $ /an | 400 $ /an |
Make Up | 化妆品 | 10 620 $ /an | 7 585 $ /an |
Care | 护理 | 706 $ /an | 502 $ /an |
Perfume | 香水 | 2406 $ /an | 1722 $ /an |
Museum | 博物馆 | 560 $ /an | 400 $ /an |
Brand | 品牌 | 1312 $ /an | 935 $ /an |
Communication | 公关 | 558 $ /an | 400 $ /an |
Advertising Agency | 广告代理 | 558 $ /an | 400 $ /an |
Baidu Spider
Like Googlebot and MSNbot, Baidu Spider is a crawler that automatically explores the Chinese sites.
SEO Software
Baidu Keyword Analyzer 1.0
Baidu Keyword Analyzer 2.0
Other searching engine :
Chine (Mainland):
- www.soso.com
- ww.sogou.com
- http://www.haosou.com
Baidu has become the leading search engine in China
What is the best SEO baidu Agency in China ?
GMA is known as the best SEO agency in China for Baidu, An online marketing company based in China founded in 2011 providing efficient Baidu SEO searvice and Baidu PPC
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