baidu

What is baidu Phoenix nest?
Baidu phoenix nest is the new baidu search engine reponse page presentation, but not only, it also affects the ads management too. Before, baidu was putting the pay-per-click ads directly above the natural organic responses. So you could “buy “ your rankings for any query. With phoenix nest, baidu seperates natural and paid listings.
 
If I launched a website the 1 of January, and wanted to rank first the 2nd of January, that was possible. So, money was leading the rankings, not quality.
Besides, even if  my online ecommerce would sell only “red cars”,  I still could buy the 1st ranking for “black car” or even “yellow carpet”. Basically, I could buy any keyword for any website… So you can imagine how the search quality was affected.
 
Why baidu is changing?
Baidu is improving its system. Now you can NOT buy your 1st position anymore, you can work to reach it, and that of course improves search quality. Baidu suffered from many scandals, and that’s probably why they decided to change. Besides, google had better quality search results, and baidu had to improve theirs to keep their huge market share (more than 60% for baidu in china vs google only 20%).
 
Baidu new Search Engine Optimization Rules?
Well, of course, from the 1st December on, the only way to rank first in the natural / organic results of baidu  is to work on your search engine optimization. That means, more seo business for us, yes :o)
 
Having great content, good html, social media optimization to leverage backlinks, we go back to the standard search engine optimization rules. That’s why you should read or read again this post we wrote about baidu seo, and about backlink strategies.
 

Many people will suffer a sudden increase or decrease of their website traffic because of this change. For example, when you look for the query “Beijing web design” in Chinese in baidu, the first natural response was ranking at the 11th position! This means, from the 1st December on, they will go from the 11th to the 1st, something tells me they will know a sudden increase of business ;o)
 

 
How this is going to affect user behavior?
The Chinese internet users usually click from the 1st to the 10th link, and even sometimes go to the second page of search engine (as you can see on the heat map below). That is said to be due to two main reasons : curiosity of the Chinese! And the fact that they are used to have first ads, and then the natural responses (I tend to believe more this second reason).
 
So if baidu is getting more accurate, if they separate the ads from natural responses, chances are this will affect users behavior, and Chinese users like the western users will click on the first 3 responses mainly… so, it’s even more important to be among the firsts.
 

 
Google Vs Baidu?
It was hard for google to beat baidu in china, it’s becoming even harder. Baidu is getting rid of its main drawback. In the search engine world, Improving search quality equals retaining users… and that’s the core of google and baidu’s business. Baidu is taking the right direction to protect its domination.
 
Baidu Stock Share Plunges!
Because of this change, baidu stock share plunged! Yes, baidu will make less money now. When you have search and ads mixed, users click more on ads than when you don’t mix them. So baidu is about to have a decrease in turn over. But seriously, isn’t that a very good move for the long run benefits and development?! Sometimes, I don’t understand analysts… or they don’t understand the business they bid on.
 
Baidu going International?
There is a big fear for baidu to go abroad. I was attending a conference two months ago where a knowledgeable speaker was talking about how some big Chinese companies feared trying to enter the European or US market. Baidu is no exception. Yes, its search quality is lower than google’s, but baidu could work on that by taking into account not only the number of backlinks but also their quality. Come on baidu “jia you”.
 
 
Ps: “baidu jia you” in Chinese, means “go go baidu”, but I tried it just for fun in google translate, which of course gave me the literal translation, “Refueling”… so, I wanna say, “refill baidu refill”.
 
 

How to rank on baidu. First, baidu is the largest Chinese search engine, with more than 60% market share, google has about 20%. So, that’s why you should rank on baidu if you want to be in the Chinese market. Actually working on your chinese seo is often working your baidu seo.

For a start, you can check your baidu rank here.

SEO Tips for Baidu Search Engine :
•    Don’t talk about s(e)x or you’ll be out
•    Don’t attack the Chinese government
•    Use Chinese in your website (but don’t mix several languages on the same page – that's a general statement, not only for chinese)
•    Use a .cn / .org.cn / or .com.cn domain name. Baidu loves China and shows it in its search engine response pages rankings.
•    Host your website in china.  Baidu prefers Chinese IP’s.
•    Have a lot of links. Baidu prefers quantity to quality. Don’t try to have a pagerank 6 or above links like you would do for google. Just have thousands of backlinks.
•    Refresh often. This advice applies to google too. But it seems baidu loves fresh content even more.
•    Don’t use ISO-8885-1 coding in your pages but UTF-8 or GB2312 (well, UTF-8 is better because it suits any language around the globe)

By the way, did you know that you can buy rankings in baidu! Yes, you can pay to be part of the search engine organic reponses (well, not so organic obviously).

How to know if it's Naturel or Paid Result in Baidu?

Actually, you can see if websites that are ranking higher than you are paying for it (which explains that you’ve been working for a year without beating them  ;o)
In the baidu search engine response pages, just check if it’s written “tuiguan” (which means they paid), or “baidu kuaizhao” (which means it’s a real naturel organic result).

Even if you don’t read Chinese, remember that it’s just 2 Chinese characters for ads and 4 chinese characters for naturel reponse. Now, you can start your baidu seo job ;o)
 

Yes, google can understand some of the javascript links, and will soon be able to understand more. They just said so at the googe I/O gathering.

What does it mean?

It means that for years, we seo experts, were telling you “NO, DON’T, Please take out that ugly javascript link that google doesn’t understand”

Now we will tell you “no, don’t, please take out that ugly javascript link that still many search engines don’t understand, even if google understand it now”.

Baidu doesn’t, yahoo doesn’t, and we don’t know yet about bing (the new Microsoft search engine), but there are big chances that it doesn’t. So, yes, continue not to use javascript links whenever you can, and always prefer the old html link tag <a href=”” title=””> </a>

What are the javascript links google can understand?

google can understand these javascript links :

1. <div onclick="document.location.href='http://gotothispage.com/'">
   
2. <div onclick="myfunctionname('gotothispage.html')"><a href="#" onclick="myfunctionname()">that's a cool page dude</a>
   
3. <a href="javascript:void(0)" onclick="window.open ('youcometothispage.html')">please open this page</a>

so yes you can use them, but please, avoid them when not necessary...

We released a new tool so that you can check your rank both in english and chinese. You can check at the same time your ranking in baidu and google. For sure, if you are looking to develop on the chinese market, you will find this tool useful.
 
Just type in directly your hanzi (chinese characters) and you will see your rankings in baidu, google USA, France, Germany and China of course. You can also have your pagerank on the same page.
 
So, don't forget to bookmark the page which is here (Baidu Rank Check)
 
If you want to link to that page in your blog or website, here is the address :
 
<a href="http://www.them.pro/google-rank-tool" title="baidu rank check google rank check"> Baidu Rank Check</a>