1) Introduction
Since most of us are quite familiar with Google and have heard of Baidu more or less, I believe that there is no need for long instructions for Google
and Baidu. In China, Baidu and Google are the two of the most famous and widely-used search engines.
As the graph from a survey in China shown, about two thirds of respondents prefer Baidu, while only one forth of respondents prefers Google. Even though Google is the most well-known search engine throughout the world, Baidu still plays a dominant role in China.
2) Search
When searching the keywords “Google vs. Baidu”, Google gets 12,500,00 0 results with 0.33 second, while Baidu gets 671,000 results with 0.054 second. When searching “谷歌百度比较”(Google vs. Baidu), Google gets 9,130,000 results with 0.49 second, while Baidu gets 548,000 results with 0.133 second. We can easily find out whether the keywords are English or Chinese, the number of the results Google gets is several times as many as that Baidu gets. The time Baidu takes shorter, but the time is too short to feel the difference.
(keywords: Google vs. Baidu)
Moreover, when we search English keywords, Baidu still presents more Chinese results than Google. In reality, when searching English keywords, Baidu cannot bear comparison with Google. In addition, from the graph, we can find out that there are some ads beside the searching results from Baidu, which makes the web page is not as neat as Google.
Another long suit of Google is that it can also show how often and when you click a link recently.
3) Why Baidu? (Google vs. Baidu: A User Experience Analysis, Jason Yu)
From previous comparison, it is not hard to figure out that Baidu is not superior to Google in efficiency, but why Baidu is so popular in China?
Just as I mentioned above, even when the keywords is Chinese, in most cases, Google presents more results than Baidu. However, Google does not perform very well. One example, when searching “次级房贷” (Subprime mortgage), we will find there are 7 results at the top 20 search results at google direct us to Web sites that use traditional Chinese characters which are hardly used in Chinese mainland so that it is challenging for the mainland Chinese to read traditional Chinese because most of them are not familiar with it. Another example, “看羹吃饭” (Kan-Geng-Chi-fan: A Chinese phrase), Baidu just gets 207 results, while Google gets 4,000,000 results. Google produced overwhelmingly more information than Baidu, but if we examine the details, Google does not produce an accurate search result within the first 10 pages while all the 207 search results from Baidu are accurate. Based on above figures, Baidu is the superior Chinese search engine.
Google has many excellent products, but some products have not performed well in China. For example, Google Maps in China is unable to provide the same features as that in the US due to the lack of mapping data in China. Actually, Google’s satellite map currently only covers the major Chinese cities.
Although music copyright is a controversial issue within China, the market reality is that millions of Chinese Internet users download free music online. Baidu understands it and its music search product — which presents a list links for free music downloads — is extremely popular. Google is unable to compete with Baidu in this regard due to its adherence to US copyright laws.
Another example is Baidu Post, an online forum allowing Internet user to create topics based on keywords and provide comments. When people search for keywords, they can also search these keywords in Baidu Post, where they may find more information or at least find out what others think of the selected keywords. Baidu also offers a blog platform (Hi Baidu) while Google has localized Blogger into Chinese which very few Chinese people use.
Local culture and consumer behavior are key factors in determining whether a product will is successful in an overseas market. So far, Google products have not been as appealing as Baidu to Chinese users. To sum up, Baidu definitely ranks above Google in China. Yet, Google, avid for the large market of China, is still putting much effort to earn a better place in Chinese Internet industry. Now, everything is not determined in this competing field but we can just enjoy the convenience due to the intense competition
References
Jason Yu. (May 2nd). 2008 Google vs. Baidu: A User Experience Analysis.
Retrieved October 28th, 2009, from
In addition, from the graph, we can find out that there are some ads beside the searching results from Baidu, which makes the web page is not as neat as Google.
ReplyDeleteFor some particular search phrases, Google will also have some ads on the right-hand side. It's just a matter of generating income. Baidu is restricted to Chinese users so they have to put the ads on their search pages, while Google with its famous Google Ads is popular to the rest of the world so it doesn't have to put their ads on every page to annoy their users.