Many U.S. Internet users never stop to wonder: how do non-English speakers search the Web? With a fairly successful translation system, Google actually dominates internationally as well as within
the U.S., but there are some exceptions. In China, for instance, Google used to be the top search engine, but conflict with the government over censorship couldn’t be resolved. Google stopped working in China, and the second-leading search engine quickly rose to number one: Baidu, a native Chinese language service that increasingly deserves Florida online marketing services’ attention.
The Critical Points about Baidu
The vast majority of Chinese speakers who conduct Internet searches use Baidu. China’s notorious censorship restricts the results that appear on the search engine, but it is still the most useful, powerful option. For searches in English, however, Baidu doesn’t do so well. There are an estimated ten million English searches each day in China, and Baidu often fails to deliver useful results. Many people still try to use Google instead, but the lack of support from Google makes that a poor option as well.
Cooperation with Bing
The English search “vacuum” in China might soon be filled thanks to a creative idea on the part of Bing, Microsoft’s search engine. Instead of entering the field as a competitor with Baidu and Google, Bing collaborates with Baidu to improve its English search results. This can benefit Florida online marketing services looking to do business internationally, as Chinese searchers will find it easier to find sites that are optimized on Bing. This partnership was announced back in 2011, and continues to develop today. It is worth noting that Bing hasn’t avoided censorship controversy, with some claiming that its censorship is sometimes even stricter than Baidu’s.
Marketing to China
China represents a very large potential customer base for companies that reach its English Internet searchers. With Google largely sitting out (currently, it has an estimated 17 percent of the search engine share), Bing may be the best route to China for U.S. websites, including those using Florida online marketing services.
