Total revenue of China search engine market last year reached 18.78 billion yuan, up 11.7% from 2010. Baidu leads search engine market with a market share of 76.1% by revenue while Google’s down to 19.8%. Sogou and Soso expanded their market share to 2.3% and 1.4% respectively.

Also read:: Charts: China 2011 Q2 Search Engine Market Update

Social Feature in Baidu Search Results

Baidu is found been testing Google +1 like features in its search results pages, like the screenshot shown above. A thumb up icon is displayed with a number in SERPs beside the display URL, like the Facebook Like box.

Visit this link (“Baidu”) or this one (“Guge”, Google’s Chinese brand name) or this (“Sogou”) to have a live view. I tested some keywords and only found keywords related to search engine brand terms that triggers this social icon.

You must be wondering where this number comes from. Baidu does not have Google+ like social network but they launched a social sharing tool called “Baidu Share” last June. This number indicates the number of times a web page is shared using Baidu Share, according to Baidu’s official post at Sina Weibo.

Baidu Share is not the most popular social bookmarking service in China; not yet. The “leak” of this social feature could be an indication of Baidu’s intention to boost the adoption of Baidu Share more broadly and rapidly. I think this feature may take months before official launch.

Also read:: Top 10 Keywords in China 2009: Baidu V.S. Google

Flight Info in Baidu Search Results

When a user searches on Baidu using “flight number”?she can view the real-time flight status on top of the search results like the screenshot shown above. Similarly, it works for train and some coach services.

The flight and train data are from Qunar, in which Baidu strategically invested $306 million last June.

Actually Baidu has started integrated some of the Qunar services into its search results. For example, when a user searches for flight from Beijing to Shanghai, she will be shown this search box and price trend:

Flight search and trend on Baidu SERP

Also read:: Baidu Map Integrates Real Time Search

The user IDs, passwords and email addresses of more than 6 million accounts registered on CSDN were leaked two weeks ago. You may want to check whether your account is already a public secret using Am I Hacked.

However, Chinese banks will benefit from this attack as China Ministry of Public Security now requires that leading search engine companies show the links of five state-owned banks at the top of every search page.

This means no matter how unfriendly the sites of banks are to the search engines, they will be shown on the top of search results page of the top ten Chinese search engines.

Also read:: Be A Baidu Wikipedia “Authority Editor” for Branding and SEO Benefit

Baidu Open Beta Platform

Baidu officially released its Open Beta Test Platform last Tuesday, a convenient “one-stop shop” for users interested in participating the latest Baidu products testing.

Upon signing in, users will discover a personal center, a mission assignment square, an on-the-spot survey column, a gifts center, and an accomplishment column. Users can click on the button “receive mission” to begin testing the product right away. New users can find newbie instruction guides and detailed information on the user points accumulation system under the Platform Strategy column, and begin maneuvering effortlessly through the platform in no time.

Internet users can detect bugs, participate in research surveys and take part in various other platform survey functions to win cash prizes, mobile hard disk drives, mobile top-up cards, and Apple products. Hardcore Baidu fans can also choose to redeem points accumulated through participation for Baidu memorabilia such as Baidu mugs and Baidu shoulder bags.

Some of the products and upgrades currently available for testing include Baidu Mobile Map, Baidu Search,  English labeling function and synonyms labeling function.

Baidu Open Beta Test Platform will certainly help in Baidu’s product development process and  the Chinese IT industry as other leading IT companies may follow and launch similar platforms.

Also read:: Baidu Launched Connect Open Platform

China Search Engine Market in Q3 2011

China web search requests amounted to 77.51 billion times in Q3 2011, up 6.1% from Q2 and 16.3% from Q3 2010 according to research company iResearch.

China Search Engine Market Share

Baidu’s search market share by revenue has gone up by 77.7% from previous quarter in Q3 2011. And, Google China’s market share is gradually reduced, a further decline of 1% compared with Q2. Market share of other search engine brands, such as Sogou and Soso, increased to varying degrees.

Also read:: Charts: China 2011 Q2 Search Engine Market Update

Top 10 Searched Auto Brands

According to Hitwise data, the most searched for auto brand is Volkswagen in both September and October.

Also read:: Hurun Most Valuable Chinese Home-grown Brands List 2011

Following up the fake customer service phone in Baidu search results, Baidu has officially launched a tool for companies to submit their customer service hotline for free.

Dell Hotline in Baidu SERP

The “hotline box” is triggered when users conduct a search on Baidu for customer service phone number. Users can then dial the number displayed on the phone or click on the “phone icon” to find out more on Dell’s website.

How to Submit Customer Service Hotline to Baidu

To get your customer service number indexed,

• You must own the company or could represent it
• Company or website name must be uniquely identifiable; it can’t be ambiguous
• The website you submit must have a contact us page
• You must have a unified national telephone number if your business has multiple branches

To submit your information, you must have a Baidu account

1. Login with Baidu account (register here if you don’t have one)
2. Add new resources > customer service
3. Fill in contact information including keyword, customer service phone number, company name and destination URL; you can add multiple phones
4. Specify an expiry date (or never expire)
5. Submit (pending approval)

Companies with large amount of customer service phone data can submit XML file as well.

Also read:: Baidu Shutting Down Its Weibo Service

Baidu has just launched a web page diagnosis tool as a new feature in their web analytics service Baidu Stats. I recommend you this tool to check your website loading performance in two Internet networks — Unicom and China Telecom networks. This is especially helpful if you have your website hosted outside China.

Baidu Stats: Enter Page URL to Check

You must have a Baidu Stats account to use this service though you don’t necessarily have to install any code on the check you want to check loading performance with this tool.

Website Loading Speed Test Results

The test results show the page loading speed in seconds, compared with other sites. You will get an idea about the percentage of sites that are faster than yours.

Web Page Speed Test Optimization Recommendations

This tool even provides recommendations on what you can do to improve the page loading speed.

Also read:: Baidu Launched Audit Tool for SEO

Baidu Webmaster Platform provides tools to optimize Chinese websites. It has been in invitation-only testing for over a year and it’s just launched public beta.

Baidu Webmaster Tools, compared to Google Webmaster Tools, are very basic and premature providing six tools for webmasters:

1. Sitemap Submission to Baidu

Webmasters can use Sitemap tool to submit their sitemap to Baidu to help Baidu spider to better understand the website structure and content. Strangely, this tool is still not available for public at the moment.  However, you can apply for one by sending a request email to: zhanzhang@baidu.com

Baidu Website Verification

Once Sitemap tool is activated, the first step is to verify the ownership of the website by either downloading and uploading a verification file or adding a meta tag in the header section.

Once your website is verified, you can proceed to submit your sitemap by selecting the sitemap type (regular sitemap or product sitemap), update frequency and sitemap URL.

Each sitemap you submit to Baidu can be in standard XML format or text format (one URL per line), including up to 50,000 URLs and it can not exceed 10M (uncompressed). Both UTF-8 and GBK encoding are supported.

If your website has multiple sitemaps, you can submit a sitemap index file.

You can also submit a URL removal request from Baidu via Sitemap tool (yes, you need to block the URL from being crawled in robots.txt or return “404″ code) and diagnose your website problems encountered when Baidu spider crawls your site.

2. Ping

You can access this tool directly here without logging to Baidu Webmaster Platform. You can submit your website URL or RSS feed address. This is not necessary if your website is already indexed.

If you have a Chinese blog, this is Baidu Ping address that would be helpful to you: http://ping.baidu.com/ping/RPC2

3. Optimization Recommendation

Baidu Optimization Recommendation

You can submit important pages of your website (or any websites) to get search engine optimization recommendations. The bad news is, you can only submit one URL at a time.

As shown in the above diagnosis of Google China’s daily deal aggregation homepage, this tool provides basic optimization recommendations on six areas:

1. The length of URL. The recommended length from Baidu is 256 bytes.
2. Dynamic parameters on static pages. This is to prevent repeated crawling of pages with the duplicate content.
3. Meta data. Meta data like META Description is necessary for all search engines.
4. Image ALT information
5. Use of frames. Baidu recommends against the use of frame/frameset/iframe.
6. Text description of Flash files

This tool seems only helpful to those without any SEO knowledge.

4. Security Check

Baidu will display a warning message in the SERP if it finds out your website is hacked or infected with malware. Of course, it doesn’t mean your site is secure even if you don’t see the warning message.

This tool helps you to diagnose the security status of your website. If you site was hacked, you fixed the problem and you still see the warning message after 48 hours, you can submit your complaint here.

5. Search Engine Submission

You can submit your newly launched website domain URL here.

6. Baidu Search Box

You can get code here to embed on your website if integrating a Baidu search box is valuable to your visitors. And, you can also enable Baidu Suggest function which works like Google Suggest.

Baidu Webmaster Tools are very basic at the moment; hopefully it will improve.

Also read:: How to Submit Customer Service Phone to Baidu Index

Baidu quietly launched two products for oversea markets, Baidu Zhidao (Baidu Answers) in Arabic and navigation site hao123 in Thai.

Baidu Zhidao in Arabic

Baidu Zhidao is a very popular Q&A site in China and Baidu attemps to extend its success in Middle East markets. So far on zhidao.baidu.com.ag, there are over 6,000 questions answered.

Hao123 in Thai

Hao123 is a navigation directory, very popular among new Internet users and this type of sites are often set as homepage on Internet cafe browsers. Baidu acquired Hao123 in 2005 at over 50 million yuan.

Interestingly, on th.hao123.com, Baidu replaced its search box with Google’s.

Also read:: Baidu Launched API Platform for Baidu Zhidao

Leaked Screenshot of Baidu Reader

A leaked screenshot shows Baidu is testing a desktop e-book reader internally, which may be released for public testing at the end of this month.

The Screenshot shows Baidu Reader includes online bookstore, my bookshelf, and docs reader modules; it covers a wide variety of content with categorizations and recommendations. Users can use it to browse and read the best sellers, open local documents and conduct searches.

According to Tencent Tech News, Baidu Reader integrates online and local documents reading experience, aiming to be an online open platform.

Also read:: Baidu Launched Open Beta Test Platform

Baidu New Homepage Launched in Sep 2011

Today is the first day of Baidu Technology Innovation Conference 2011 in Beijing, a very important event for Baidu where several new products will be announced. Baidu launched their new homepage for login users with newly added modules as shown above last night around 8pm.

Baidu New Homepage

Baidu New Homepage Details; Click to Enlarge

Baidu calls this newly launched homepage “yihao zhida” (No.1 Direct Access).

The navigation module provides not only shortcuts to frequently accessed websites but also notifications of Baidu partner web services such as Sina Weibo and Renren:

Baidu Homepage Navigation Module Option

Users can also add applications to the homepage:

Baidu Homepage Apps

If you have a Baidu account and logged in, you will see the new homepage.

Also read:: Baidu Launched Product for Thai and Middle East Markets

Baidu Connect open platform is based on OAuth2.0 and opens up Baidu user account system, buddy relationship chain and related product core data interface to third parties.

All third party websites can enable users’ access with Baidu account. Developers can also get user login information and friends relationship data via their IFRAME applications.

Baidu Connect supports not only web applications but also desktop and mobile applications.

Also read:: Baidu Launched Open Beta Test Platform

Last week, Baidu launched Baidu Account Manager which is similar to Google AdWords MCC. With one master account, search marketers can view and manage multiple accounts.

Like many of Baidu’s services, you can’t get this AM set-up yourself; you must go through an application process.

Also read:: Baidu Launched New Homepage with Modules

Sogou Browser

While Baidu just launched their own Baidu Browser, Sogou (part of Sohu) this week also launched the third version of their “fastest dual-core browser“.

One feature worth mentioning is “webpage update alert” function. Whether it’s a resources page or your competitors news release page, Sogou Browser will alert you if there is any content update.

You can track content update on social media websites like Weibo, Renren, Kaixin and most blogs as well.

Also read:: Baidu Officially Enters China Browser Market

China Q2 Search Engine Market Share by Revenue

According to Enfodesk’s data, total revenue in China search engine market reached 4.32 billion yuan (about USD 668 million) in the second quarter of 2011, up 33.2% compared to the first quarter.

Google’s market share by revenue continued its down trend to 18.9% and Baidu’s up slightly to 75.9%.

China Search Engine Market Revenue: 2010 Q1 to 2011 Q2

Also read:: China’s Search Engine Market Update for Q3 2011

Baidu Browser

There are so many companies in China interested in web browser market including Tencent, Sohu, and 360. Baidu today officially entered this competition with the launch of Baidu Browser.

Yes, it looks a lot like Chrome, an opinion shared by most Chrome users in China. But, it so far only support PC and there is no Mac version available.

Baidu Browser Apps

The launch of the browser product integrates over 30,000 web apps into one place:

Play Games in Baidu Browser

Also read:: New Sogou Browser Keep An Eye on Webpage Content for You

Google China team released a chrome extension to provide bilingual search suggestions. After installation, Google Suggest will display two languages in two columns for each suggested search query.

Users can select any of the 53 languages available along with Chinese for Google bilingual search suggest. The most common 10 languages can be quickly chosen; the rest are available in extension options.

It’s actually an extension not only useful to Chinese but also Chinese language learners. For search marketers, you can find relevant Chinese keyword as well (of course ideally you should conduct separate Chinese keyword research).

Users can select which Google services they want to have bilingual search suggestions as well.

Also read:: Google.cn Has Already Stopped Censoring Search Results

Baidu Mobile Search

If a user (with an iPhone or Android phone) walks on the street and wants a burger from McDonald’s, all she has to do is to take out her phone and open m.baidu.com to perform a search. The search results will show where she is, where the nearest McDonald’s is, its contact number and the route to get there.

Also read:: Baidu Mobile Union for Mobile App Developers