Posted on September 21st, 2007 by startuplay
China’s leading Search Engine, Baidu, yesterday launched an Olympic
channel (2008.baidu.com) that combines everything about Olympics in one space (chats, videos, news, etc…). Having seen Sina.com and Sohu release their Olympic brand channels long ago, this is clearly a strategy to win the big buck from huge advertising sponsors.
Sohu’s CEO Zhang Chaoyang
Association with Olympics games is currently a big brand game in China, with many companies using Beijing 2008 logos illegally. Sina’s CEO, Cao Guowei, repeatedly made claims arguing against Sohu’s exclusive rights (as a web company) to 2008 brand association. Yet, Sohu still remains it priveleges and is currently the provider for the official olympic site: BOCOG.
Similar to Google’s recent development, Baidu is increasingly stepping out of its pure search engine presence into the world of portals. Makes one wonder whether perhaps the traditional advertising bucks just feel more comfortable been poured into flashing images on portals (as opposed to text ads under the search bar).
Filed under: China Market | »
Posted on September 18th, 2007 by startuplay
Notable Facts:
- Baidu and Google have grown their market share at the expense of the smaller players like Yahoo! and Sogou
- Sina (with 49% share) dominates traffic to web sites for non-search purposes with Sohu & Netease following the lead
- Google Vs Baidu demographics show close correlation in age, gender and education level
- The Survey only covered Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou - all very different from general market (and future growth)
- Google’s market shares have increased in all the three cities over the last six months, with the strongest recovery in Shanghai
For more information: download a China Search Engine Report(pdf) or contact Peter Bowang Lu at iaskchina.cn
Filed under: Reports - China, Internet Development, Globalization | 2 Comments »
Posted on September 5th, 2007 by startuplay
Sohu (Nasdaq: SOHU) CEO Charles Zhang said on September 4 denied that Sohu manipulated its site traffic ranking on Alexa.com, reports eNet. Zhang said that he is willing to swear to Chairman Mao or to the heaven that Sohu did not cheat on its traffic statistics. Alexa on August 31 made changes to its traffic calculations, resetting traffic counters to zero for several Chinese websites that were discovered to be manipulating site traffic. Sohu’s global traffic ranking dropped from the teens to number 48 while its global-page-view rate decreased from 1.7 to 0.83 percent on September 3.
Simply Amazing! Not only is it well known how far off Alexa’s ranks tend to be relative to other reports, but using Alexa in China to measure site stats is simply a sign of ignorance. Alexa just calculates its stats using the toolbar few of us have. While it might give some accurate approximation in Europe, who said anything about China? With all the money Google has got behind it, how easy is it for G to spread its toolbar (not!) - and here we are talking about amazon, which is virtually inexistent in China.
Filed under: China Market Trends - Daily Online Usage Trends | »
