Global Search Engine Marketing & Social Media News And Analysis » David Temple

Global Search Engine Marketing: A Book Review

David Temple — Mon, 02 Apr 2012 10:17:32 +0000

There’s no doubt that the search engine market is growing at a rapid rate around the globe as more and more people come online. comScore reports that more than 88 per cent of Internet users are outside the US.

Finally there’s a book on the market that addresses this compelling fact and it covers global pay-per-click, SEO, social media, mobile apps, multilingual web analytics and more.

The book “Global Search Engine Marketing: Fine Tuning Your International Search Engine Results” by Anne Kennedy, founder and managing partner of Beyond Ink and Kristján Már Hauksson, founder of Nordic eMarketing and fellow blogger here at Multilingual Search.

The first chapter titled “Can You Afford Not to Think Globally” addresses the sheer size of the global search engine market pointing out that in October 2011 there were 185 billion searches worldwide. That’s nearly 6 billion searches a day, 248+ million searches per hour or 4 million searches per minute. That’s a whole lotta searching going on! It also points out the one size does NOT fit all when doing business online worldwide.

In the second chapter “Common Territory: Search Marketing Without Borders” the authors discuss the commonalities in search engine marketing around the globe including mistakes like having a single English only website, using mechanical translations (my personal pet peeve) and using literal translations of your English keywords. The chapter also covers setting goals, keyword research, talent, localization and other common issues.

Other chapters are divided by countries or regions; China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan, Russia, United Kingdom, Germany, South Korea, India, Nordic countries, Netherlands, France, Spain, Italy, Canada, Brazil, South America, Mexico, Singapore, as well as Middle Eastern and North African countries.

Each country/regional chapter covers the markets online profile, search market share, common mistakes, ppc, seo, analytics, press releases and ends with a tips section. The search market share was very interesting showing Google’s domination in most countries but also their competition with Baidu in China, Yandex in Russia and Naver in South Korea.

The common mistakes section in each country was interesting as well with revelations like search marketers lumping countries in Asia together, Singapore, China and Hong Kong for example and using direct translations like “mobile phone” in Germany. The tips were also helpful including where to focus more on mobile or which countries have larger broadband penetration where you could use rich media.

There are two additional chapters “SEO/SEM Resources” that covers books, website tools, pr and conferences and “Google Countries and Domains” showing the country, language(s) and the domain of Google search in that country.

As a global search engine marketer with some experience I found this book enlightening and filled with wonderful nuggets of information. This is a book that you not only want to read but refer to quite often as you plan and execute your global search engine marketing strategy.

Baidu’s Yi OS To Power Dell In China

David Temple — Thu, 08 Sep 2011 02:07:42 +0000

Baidu, China’s top online search engine, teamed up with Dell to integrate the Yi OS, an Android alternative, into Dell’s smart phones and tablets manufactured in China. Baidu’s Yi OS has some tough competion in China with Nokia and Alibaba. Alibaba recently released it’s Aliyun OS, a Linux-based operating system, on a Chinese-manufactured smartphone.

The Chinese mobile market is growing at an incredible page with over 900 million mobile subscribers and over 350 million mobile Internet users, buying 250 million new handsets each year according to this article by Alvin Wang Graylin at this Click Z article

The main competition comes from Apple and Lenovo with Apple leading the way, in fanatical fan behaviour at least, as highlighted by these stories on TechCrunch – girls giving up theirvirginity for an iPhone 4 and a Chinese teenager selling his kidney for an iPad 2.

Google Eyes Indonesia Office

David Temple — Mon, 25 Jul 2011 16:51:19 +0000

Google plans to open offices in Jakarta, Indonesia by the end of 2011 according to spokesman Yopie Hidayat after talks between Eric Schmidt, Executive Chairman of Google and Indonesia’s Vice President Boediono . Indonesia is the largest online market in Southeast Asia, with 40 million online users which represent only an 18 percent Internet penetration rate. In 2010 Indonesia saw a growth of 48 percent and 22 percent growth in 2009 according to a Yahoo study.

“The Vice President and Google’s chairman held a meeting where Google expressed their interest to invest here and open a local office before 2012,” the spokesman Yopie Hidayat told Dow Jones Newswires.

In his keynote in the Regional Entrepreneur Summit (RES) in Bali , Indonesia earlier, Schmidt stated that he thinks that Indonesia can be the next Brazil. He added “Asia is the future, not the U.S.” Google opened an office in Singapore in May 2007 to manage its SE Asian operations and recently opened another in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia earlier this year.

China Reaches 500 Million Internet Users – 50 Million More Expected In 2011

David Temple — Wed, 20 Jul 2011 04:28:14 +0000

According to DCCI, Data Center of Chinese Internet, China reached 500 million internet users in the first half of 2011. They also estimated that it will reach 551 million this year. The sixth national population census estimates China’s population has reached 1.37 billion which make the internet penetration rate at only 36.4 percent. This compares to the US which is at 77.3 percent or 230 million internet users, according to Internet World Stats.

The number appears to be inflated as another recent estimate by CNNIC, China Internet Network Information Center, put the number of internet users at 485 million. According to some analyst this number is also inflated as CNNIC considers a person six years and older, who has connected to the Internet in the past six months, as an internet user. CNNIC also reports 318 million Chinese now access the Internet from their mobile phones,

Nevertheless these numbers are incredible when compared with the US, other Asian countries and the rest of world.

Baidu Offers A New Web Browser

David Temple — Mon, 18 Jul 2011 15:12:44 +0000

Baidu, (BIDU) China’s largest search engine, unveiled the beta version of it’s new web browser. The Baidu browser contains more than 30,000 apps which connects users to online games, videos and other tools. The web browser is reported to have focused on security as Baidu has built it with the intention of protecting the user’s PC from malware. It was built using Baidu’s “box computing” concept introduced at Baidu Innovation Conference 2009. The concept allows users to search for results on Baidu as well as execute commands and launch apps all within the browser itself.

Internet Explorer currently dominates China’s browser market with a 62.9 percent share but down significantly from the 83.3 percent share it held earlier this year. IE has long dominated China’s Web browser market because IE is the default browser for Windows systems and the lack of awareness of other available browsers. Lately those other browsers such as Tencent’s TT browser, Souhu’s Sogou browser and Qihu’s 360 Security browser have managed to put a dent in IE’s market share. Google’s Chrome and Mozilla’s Firefox are also available in China but lack the adoption rate seen in the rest of the world.

China Mobile, Xinhua to develop new search engine

David Temple — Sun, 15 Aug 2010 13:10:56 +0000

China Mobile, the world’s biggest cellphone carrier and Xinhua, China’s official state run news agency, signed an agreement to establish a new Internet search engine and international media company, “Search Engine New Media International Communications Co.” It was not immediately clear whether this new venture would cover mobile search only or develop a traditional search engine as well.

There are more than 420 million Internet users in China with an additional 800 million mobile phone subscribers. China’s online search market is currently dominated by Baidu which according to Analysys International controls 70 percent of China’s market share. Google ranks in second place with 24.2 percent falling from 30.9 percent in the first quarter. falling from 30.9 percent in the first quarter.

In the mobile search space Baidu leads with about percent share, followed Easou, a WAP-based mobile search partnering with Chinese Web portal Sohu.com, with 17 percent and Google with about 12 percent.

Google pulled out of China earlier this year, complaining about online attacks that appeared to be coming from hackers within China. It now operates its search engine from Hong Kong but Google recently renewed its license to operate its search services in China.

Xinhua New Agency Vice President Zhou Xisheng was quoted as saying “Search engines, which have powerful information integration abilities, play an increasingly important role in disseminating information and influencing public opinion.”

GoDaddy, Network Solutions join the China bailout

David Temple — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 02:29:23 +0000

GoDaddy, the world’s largest domain name registration company, stopped registering websites in China on Wednesday after it received demands for additional information about its existing customers. This was revealed in Congressional hearings focusing on Google’s decision to stop censoring search results. Network Solutions stopped registering the “.cn” domain names in December last year in response to new government rules enacted. Those rules required anyone registering a “.cn” domain name to provide a color photograph of themselves as well as a business registration number in China and signed registration forms which would then be forwarded to the China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC).

Go Daddy, has been registering domain names in China since 2005 and hosts many websites the Chinese government finds politically sensitive. They currently manage about 27,000 “.cn” domain names. The “.cn” names continue to be available through other resellers.
Rep. Christopher H. Smith (R-N.J.), sponsor of a bill that would prevent US based companies from sharing personal information said, “Go Daddy and Google deserve more than praise for doing the right thing in China — they deserve our government’s support”.
countries.

Global Search Engine Usage Grows by 46% in 2009

David Temple — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 02:24:20 +0000

comScore, Inc. released a study on the growth in global searches in 2009. The study indicated the U.S. remains the largest search market and Google maintained their global search market lead with a 58 percent rise over last year. Google had more than 87 billion searches or 66.8% of the global search market. Yahoo came in second with 9.4 billion searches but only a 13% increase and Baidu third with 8.53 billion searches and a lackluster 7% increase.

The United States had the largest search market globally with 22.7 billion searches or about 17% of the total number of searches. China was second on the list with 13.3 billion searches and Japan with 9.2 billion, was third. Search in Russia grew dramatically by 92 percent to increase to 3.3 billion searches.

“The global search market continues to grow at an extraordinary rate, with both highly developed and emerging markets contributing to the strong growth worldwide,” said Jack Flanagan, comScore executive vice president. “Search is clearly becoming a more ubiquitous behavior among Internet users that drives navigation not only directly from search engines but also within sites and across networks. If you equate the advancement of search with the ability of humans to cultivate information, then the world is rapidly becoming a more knowledgeable ecosystem.”

Google threatens to exit China

David Temple — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 08:00:03 +0000

Google has threatened to withdraw from China after a cyber attack out of China tried to break into the Gmail accounts of human rights activists. They also targeted twenty other companies. In a blog post Google said it experienced a “highly sophisticated and targeted attack on our corporate infrastructure, with the probes originating from China” beginning in mid-December, which it said resulted in “the theft of intellectual property”.

They also cited attempts by the Chinese government to tighten censorship. Google said it was prepared to pull out if it was not permitted to run its local service without further censoring. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called on China “for an explanation” of Google’s allegations. “The ability to operate with confidence in cyberspace is critical in a modern society and economy,” Mrs. Clinton said.

In June 2004 Google bought a 2.4% stake in Baidu, China’s biggest search engine, Baidu. Then, in April 2005, it paid a cyber-squatter for the google.cn domain name. Google entered the China market in 2005 and set up a China research and development center in July 2005. They launched google.com.cn in January of 2006. On their blog they state ‘At the time we made clear that “we will carefully monitor conditions in China, including new laws and other restrictions on our services. If we determine that we are unable to achieve the objectives outlined we will not hesitate to reconsider our approach to China.”

Google appointed Kai-Fu Lee, a Microsoft corporate vice-president, as Google China president and head of the new center which led to a lawsuit. Microsoft settled out of court with Google in December 2005. Terms of the agreement were not released. Dr Lee left Google in September of last year.

Baidu to provide wireless search for China Unicom

David Temple — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 03:38:33 +0000

Baidu, China’s leading search engine announced yesterday that it has signed an agreement with China Unicom to provide wireless search. China Unicom is the country’s second largest cell phone operator with 141 million mobile users. China Telecom, the largest cell phone operator has 450 million users.

In May, Baidu reached a deal to provide search service in a value-added service platform run by China Telecom. Baidu services, including text, image, MP3 and news search, will be installed on China Unicom’s 3G mobile phones. It will also provide search services for China Unicom’s mobile Internet websites. China Unicom also plans to launch the iPhone in China this month.

According to Analysys International, Baidu leads with over 60 percent of the search market share but Google is currently leading China’s mobile search market with 26.6 percent compared to 26 percent for Baidu.

“We hope that Baidu’s cooperation with major telecom providers in China will accelerate the development of 3G services and allow us to provide the rapidly growing population of mobile search users better access to information,” said Ren Xuyang, Baidu’s vice-president, in a statement yesterday.

Twitter, Flickr, Bing, Live & Hotmail blocked in China

David Temple — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 10:23:28 +0000

According to Danwei, a popular Chinese media, advertising, and urban life blog, the following sites are now blocked in China. Twitter, Flickr, Hotmail, Live and Bing. It appears that Bing, the new Microsoft search engine is being blocked because it is “autoplaying Youtube videos when you put your mouse over them.” Kaiser Kuo, digital guru and former blogger at Ogilvy’s Digital Watch said in an interview with Reuters, “The whole Twitter community in China has been exploding with it.” He added, “It’s just part of life here. If anything surprises me, it’s that it took them so long.”

This action comes ahead of the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen massacre. Also there are the recently released memoirs of Zhao Ziyang’s based on conversations with a close friend of his during his many years under house arrest. Zhao Ziyang was the was prime minister and party general secretary of nine years until he was purged after he refused to sanction the crackdown and massacre of protesters in Tiananmen Square. The US Congress called Tuesday on China to launch a UN-backed probe of its crackdown and to free all political prisoners.

As reported earlier on Multilingual Search, a set of internal working documents from the censorship department at Baidu, China’s largest search engine, were recently leaked. China often blocks sites and then removes the blocks after what perhaps may be an adjustment to their filters. A China Digital Times post includes a comprehensive list of the websites that are being censored by Baidu.

Baidu staff strike over new salary system

David Temple — Sat, 16 May 2009 11:23:39 +0000

Employees from Baidu’s South China subsidiary went on strike protesting changes to the new salary system which became effective May 1 of this year as reported by 163.com. The employees signed a new salary agreement in late April and are claiming they didn’t fully understand it. They began protesting in front of Guangzhou’s Tianhe District Labor Bureau after negotiations failed. The Chief Operating Officer at Baidu Ye Peng was unaware of the protest, according to the report.

Source: JLM Pacific Epoch, 163.com

Baidu censorship documents leaked

David Temple — Fri, 08 May 2009 07:35:38 +0000

A set of internal working documents from the censorship department at Baidu, China’s largest search engine, were recently leaked. These documents are quickly appearing on blogs, forums and across the internet both in China and around the world. A China Digital Times post includes a comprehensive list of the websites that are being censored by Baidu. The documents also include staff names and their performance records, company contacts censorship guidelines, operating instructions, as well as specific lists of topics and even words to be censored. Additional company information is included in the time frame from November 2008 through March 2009.

Some of the blacklisted topics including; information on “defending human rights and appeals,” Falun Gong, the 1989 Tiananmen Square student massacre, information on Chinese Communist Party leaders, ethnic minority issues and the human organ trade. Each topic contains a list of keywords such as “quit the CCP,” “dictatorship,” “suppression,” “China’s human rights” and “brainwashing.”

According to a report published by the University of Toronto last year that compared the transparency of search engines in China, censorship was found to be blocking sites at a rate of more than 26% of the tested websites. Baidu censored the most. In addition western search engines also provided censorship. Yahoo censored 21% of the website and Google 15%.

Source: China Digital Times, New Tang Dynasty Television

Baidu tops revenue forecasts

David Temple — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 01:58:25 +0000

Baidu (BIDU), China’s leading search engine reported first-quarter net income grew 24%. Baidu’s total revenues in the first quarter of 2009 were CNY810.7 million (USD 118.76 million), a 41.1% increase from the corresponding period in 2008. Net income for the quarter was CNY181.1 million (USD 26.5 million), a 23.5% increase from the corresponding period in 2008.

According to Thomson Reuters, the company said it expects revenue in the second quarter to be between $157 million and $161 million again topping analyst forecasts. Baidu recently launched a new advertising platform, called Phoenix Nest. In order to more clearly differentiate paid search results from organic, paid search ads now appear at the top of the screen in a shaded area much like the Google paid results.

Baidu will post a high growth rate “for years to come” as online demand surges in the world’s third-biggest economy, Chief Executive Officer Robin Li said as reported by Bloomberg.

Source: Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg

Baidu accused of being a monopoly

David Temple — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 02:44:46 +0000

Baidu.com, China’s leading search engine company, has been accused of being a monopoly by the Tangshan Renren Information Service Company (TRISC) who is demanding more than 1.1 million renminbi (USD $160,000) in compensation. The suit was opened at the Beijing No. 1 Intermediate People’s Court on April 22, 2009. Baidu refused an out of court settlement based on compensation for TRISC losses. This appears to be the first case filed under the Anti-Monopoly Law, which came into effect this month.

In the meantime Baidu reports increase in advertising spend since late January. It appears that the Chinese economy has recovered in recent months and advertisers are spending more on Baidu according to Robin Li, as told to reporters at the Boao Forum.

“Our data suggests that the confidence of many consumers and companies has been picking up rather rapidly since the Spring Festival,” said Li, referring to the start of the Chinese Lunar New Year, which took place in late January this year. Recently Baidu’s advertising sales had been been affected by the economic slowdown in China as well as being forced to remove paid listings from questionable medical firms.

Source: Reuters, China Daily

Baidu launches search for seniors

David Temple — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 09:54:25 +0000

Baidu.com, the world’s leading Chinese search, launched a specially designed search engine for seniors. The search engine which is more like a portal is named named “Baidu Elderly Search” in Chinese. The design helps older users by emphasizing clicking on links as opposed to entering characters. It is a clean design with large fonts and there are no ads. The menu is made for an older audience.

Baidu recently conducted research and found that seniors are interested in the internet, but the lack of internet related skills prevents them from using it. The China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC) show that only 5 million people over the age of 50 had used search engines. Robin Li, Baidu chairm, said that the search engine will take advantage of its technologies and resources to assist senior people in enjoying a more colorful life.

Baidu unveils the ‘Aladdin Plan’ to reveal hidden web

David Temple — Sat, 20 Dec 2008 12:20:04 +0000

Baidu, the world’s largest Chinese search engine, announced the opening of a Shanghai research and development center to implement the “Aladdin Plan” in order to identifying the ‘Hidden Web’. The Hidden Web, also know as ‘Deepnet’ or, the ‘Invisible Web’ is content that is not currently indexed by search engines. This area of the web is estimated to be several time larger than the surface Web, which statistics indicate accounts for 0.2 percent of the total information available.

“Aladdin is an open search engine platform,” said Li Yinan, Chief Technology Officer of Baidu, “we hope this platform could instantly meet all the searching demands of our users, just like the Aladdin’s lamp in the fairy story.” Li defines this plan as “the most technically challenging task” and more than 1000 core engineers of 2000 have been involved in the plan. “More engineers will be involved following the establishment of Shanghai R&D center,” added Li.

Sources: Trading Markets, ChinaStakes.com

Google opens up hard liquor ads

David Temple — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 08:15:20 +0000

Google recently opened ads to beer and now hard liquor ads will be allowed in January. The liquor advertisers can only buy ads on Google that are directed to the liquor manufacturers site. According to a Google rep in Asia when asked about liquor ads in Asia;

‘Google is only relaxing the policy in countries where alcohol is legally allowed. Therefore, the advertiser can only target these countries ~ Singapore (the only countries in SE Asia), China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Japan, Korea, and Australia. In addition, the targeted launch date is tentatively set on 12th January 2009 and not the 1st. In order to get the ads approved, it is best to send us the URL and TextAds so we can submit to Ads Approval to get them approved before launching campaigns with alcohol ads (non-family safe).

Baidu’s Robin Li to keynote at ad:tech Shanghai

David Temple — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 10:14:41 +0000

Robin Li, CEO of the world’s leading Chinese search engine Baidu, will be the keynote speaker at ad:tech. ad:tech, a global interactive marketing event, will be held in Shanghai, Novermber 25 – 26, 2008 at the Shanghai International Convention and Exhibition Center. Day 2 keynote speakers will be Harry Hui, Chief Marketing Officer of PepsiCo International, China Beverages and S Y Lau, EVP online media, Tencent.

“In 2008, China’s net-using population has surpassed the US to become the world’s biggest, with 253 million people according to the latest report.’ Robin Li, CEO of Baidu said: “This has brought SEM with greater development opportunities, so I believe that more and more Chinese enterprises will set up departments within the next 5 years to learn and promote SEM.”

B2B search engine Accoona acquired by Masterseek

David Temple — Sun, 09 Nov 2008 03:37:22 +0000

Accoona, a b2b search engine, was recently acquired by the Masterseek, a global business search engine. “Masterseek is a virtual showroom to search out business information about others and to guide and update the information available on your own company.”

Accoona launched in 2004 with great fanfare including having former US President Bill Clinton speak at its opening. Accoona claims to list 49,728,000 company profiles on the search engine. In China Accoona has supplied search results to Sina.com and Sohu. Accoona also has an exclusive partnership with the China Daily News, the most widely-read daily newspaper in China.

“We have worked intensely for the last two weeks in order to get all of the legalities and finances in place for the takeover and there is still a great deal of work in front of us to integrate and re-launch the search service,” states Rasmus Refer, founder of the Masterseek Corp.