Baidu, the Chinese search engine announced this week that it will be teaming up (non-financially) with the Microsoft search engine Bing.
Bing will be generating the English search results for Baidu who already has ownership of 83% of the market. Now, if a person in China searches in English on Baidu, English search results will appear within the Chinese results.
This has been publicised very close to the announcement that Google is withdrawing from the Chinese market and moving into Hong Kong.
The apparent reason for Google’s sudden exit of China is due to the excessive red tape that China enforces – All search results in China are screened and accordingly censored to comply with government regulations: What the government deems “dangerous” is filtered from results.
This can be troublesome for search engines as they will not truly ever be able to display the most natural results for the search.
Since 2008, China has overtaken the USA as the largest internet using country in the world. But China’s insistence on blocking “dangerous” results will make it very difficult for Bing to manoeuvre and for the Chinese Market to continue to grow. The main results that are filtered out by the government that create difficulties are:-
- Instant Messaging
- Chat Rooms
- Text Messaging
- Any opinion based forums
- Any other opinion based results
China is stated to have the most extensive and advanced ‘Internet Repression’ than any other country in the world.
As Bing currently only holds around 15% market share in the USA compared with Google’s 65%, will this new partnership help increase Bing’s overall share of the world’s internet search market?
Will Bing and Baidu create a new combined logo or will Bing appear as more of a silent partner?
For any company looking to expand into another market, there are many things to consider, not least the language barriers. That is why at Search Laboratory, we employ in-house native mother tongue speakers of your target language to translate campaigns in the most effective and productive way. By using this method, we are sure to account for all language differences and localised phrases and colloquialisms; thus providing much more fluid and natural content.
If the recent Bing and Baidu partnership has spurred you on to think about search engine marketing in China and tapping into an extra 477 million internet users, give us a call on +44 (0)113 2121211.
References:
https://www.searchenginewatch.com/2011/07/05/bing-and-baidu-team-up-for-english-search-results/
https://uk.pcmag.com/news/107610/microsoft-bing-to-power-baidu-search-in-china
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