Baidu SEO & China Online Marketing News & Tips

Add Ignored Chinese Search Engines to Google Analytics

Ryan — Fri, 10 May 2013 07:49:53 +0000

By default, Google Analytics recognizes only around 40 search engines, according to the official Default Search Engine List on Google Developers.

But in real world, there should be more than just 40 search engines.

In China alone, besides the dominant player Baidu, there are several other search engines, whose market shares may be low but the real numbers of users are considerable due to the total market size, including Soso, Sogou, Qihu and Youdao, all of which are counted as referral traffic sources in the default settings of Google Analytics.

Recently a client of ours learned the lesson painfully. They are a photo-sharing site where users can create photo albums, and upload and share photos. They used the default Google Analytics settings and they found their organic traffic was not good.

After analyzing their server logs, we found their traffic should be much higher than what they saw in Google Analytics. That led us to figure out what the problem is:

The organic traffic from Baidu Image Search is labeled as referral traffic in their Google Analytics account.

That’s because Baidu Image Search uses a different query parameter than Baidu Web Search. Baidu uses the parameter “wd” for its web search but “word” for its image and video search.

(Please note the moble version of Baidu also uses the query parameter “word” instead of “wd”. Sometimes even Baidu Web Search uses “word”. More information about the URL parameters of Baidu)

How to Add These Ignored Search Engines?

The good news is since the traffic code of Google Analytics is using Javascript, it’s quite easy to customize the tracking code to add addtional search engines. The method to use is _addOrganic().

To add the suggested Chinese engines, you need to edit your Google Anlaytics codes to make it look like this:

Is there another Chinese search engine you want to add? Leave us the web address of the search engine and we will update the codes.

Forget Google and Use These Hosted JavaScript Libraries in China

Ryan — Fri, 29 Mar 2013 15:23:54 +0000

Using popular javascript libraries like jQuery hosted on the CDNs of Google, Microsoft and others is a common practice for web developers. It can improve the website’s performance in terms of latency, parallelism and caching.

However, due to unstable services from overseas companies like Google in China, sometimes requests to these hosted libraries fail then you site becomes slow and ugly to your visitors – a real nightmare to businesses that rely on web.

So today I have collected some popular javascript libraries hosted by Chinese Internet companies. They are hosted on servers within China so they are much more stable and faster.

Baidu CDN Library

jQuery

jQuerymobile

jQuery UI

JSON

Webfont

Backbone

Bootstrap

Dojo

More public libraries from Baidu

Sina Public Resources

jQuery

jQuery UI

Bootstrap

Dojo

Webfont

Yui

UpYun Library

jQuery

jQuery UI

MooTools

Modernizr

Dojo

Ember.js

Baidu CNY Updates: Canonical, Crawl-delay and Disavow Tool

Ryan — Sat, 02 Mar 2013 12:28:11 +0000

The Chinese New Year is a very big day to all Chinese people and usually nobody is at work, but surprisingly, Baidu seems to have rolled out quite a few updates during the period – below are three of them that I think very important to SEOs:

1. Baidu Supports the Canonical Tag Now

In February, Baidu made an official statement that it supports the canonical tag now. In Baidu’s announcement, Baidu said webmasters and SEOs can add the canonical tag to the section of the non-canonical versions of a web page, to tell Baidu which is the canonical page, to avoid duplicate content issues.

However, Baidu didn’t mention if it supports the Link rel=”canonical” HTTP header or not, so SEOs and webmasters still need to reply on alternative ways to solve duplicate content issues for PDFs and other file types that are indexable by Baidu.

Another thing to note is that Baidu doesn’t guarantee the canonical page set by you will always be the page it chooses. Other factors may affect Baidu’s decision on a canonical page. For example, if Baidu believes a non-canonical page has more valuable, user-favored content than a canonical page, Baidu may choose the non-canonical page instead of the canonical one.

2. Baidu Ignores Crawl-Delay

Baidu recently announced that it doesn’t support the Crawl-delay directive in robots.txt. But if you believe Baiduspider causes load issues on your server, you can use the load-testing tool within Baidu Webmaster Tools, to customize the crawl frequency of Baiduspider.

3. Baidu Has Disavow Tool Now

Google introduced the Disavow Links Tool last year and this time, Baidu follows quite quickly – in March 2013, Baidu introduced their own version of Disavow Tool, letting SEOs remove the links they think harmful for the SEO performance of their websites on Baidu.

~~Currently the tool is still in beta, and you need to email your website and username of Baidu Webmaster Tools to zhanzhangpingtai@baidu.com for application.~~

Now Baidu Disavow Tool has gone public. Follow the link to the tool here: http://zhanzhang.baidu.com/inboundremove.

All Websites Should Use DNSPod in China

Ryan — Tue, 25 Dec 2012 06:01:00 +0000

DNSPod is a Chinese intelligent DNS hosting service provider launched in in March, 2006 and acquired by Tencent in August 2011 . By July 2012, DNSPod has over 500 thousand users, supporting more than 800 thousand domains and processing around 10 billion requests per day.

Before telling you why I think all websites should use it, I’d like to add some explanations on how DNS works and why intelligent DNS hosting is necessary in China:

How DNS servers work

A DNS server resolves domain names to IP addresses. When someone types your domain name in the browser and tries to access it, the request first goes to the corresponding DNS server, which maps the domain to the IP address of your server that hosts your site, then the connection starts and your server begins to respond to the request. Many domain registrars have their own DNS servers. For example, GoDaddy has DNS servers in U.S. and the DNS server records of GoDaddy are like xxx.domaincontrol.com.

Why intelligent DNS hosting is necessary

Faster

The major advantage of using intelligent DNS hosting is that an intelligent DNS hosting service has a large network of DNS servers across the country and even globally, and (theoretically) always uses the fastest DNS server to do the mapping between the domain and the IP address based on the location of the request and the network conditions.

For example, a user from Shanghai wants to visit your website hosted in North America. If you are using an intelligent DNS hosting, the request from the Shanghai user will go to a DNS server in or near Shanghai, chosen dynamically from the network of DNS servers by the service provider, instead of a U.S-based DNS server.

Safer

For no apparent reasons, some of the DNS servers of major domain registrars like GoDaddy are occasionally blocked in China.

Using intelligent DNS can well protect your website from an unnecessary nightmare like this, in which your DNS servers are under attack, down or banned.

Easier

Say you have a bunch of domains from different registrars. With intelligent DNS, you can manage them all in one place. Also, most DNS hosting services have their service panels well optimized for user experience, so it’s much easier to add/remove/edit domain records there.

Why DNSPod is great

DNSPod is Chinese SEO Shifu’s favorite and we have been recommending it to our clients . There are also other good DNS hosting services like Amazon Route 53, but DNSPod still seems the best, especially to those who want to improve their website performance in China.

Here are a few cool features DNSPod has:

Unlimited number of domains and records;
DNS attack detection and protection. ;
Automatic switch between primary production servers and standby servers;
Search engine indexation improvement: DNSPod has partnerships with major Chinese search engines including Baidu and SOSO, and automatically push new domains to them;
Very powerful free version!

If you are entering China, I seriously recommend you to give DNSPod a try.

*Please note there is no affiliate relationship between Chinese SEO Shifu and DNSPod, and all the thoughts and comments above about DNSPod are based on Ryan’s own experience with DNSPod.

If you need help with China web hosting, you can read this page.

Image source: official website of DNSPod

Free Chinese Social Media Icons for Popular SNS in China

Ryan — Mon, 29 Oct 2012 18:00:04 +0000

This icon set includes the icons for popular Chinese social media websites, including Sina Weibo, Tencent Weibo, RenRen, Kaixin, and QZone.

Kudos for our graphic design shifu Wu Kang, who spent his last Thursday night creating and polishing this icon set. According to him, that night was intended for a date, but it is widely believed in our company that it was just another night of Angry-Birding for him.

Anyway, many thanks to Wu Kang!

Preview:

Download:

Please follow this link to download the icon set.

The icons are in PNG and GIF formats, and in 32×32 and 16×16 resolutions. The original psd file is also included.

Notice:

Free for both commercial and personal use, no attribution required
Do not repackage or redistribute. If you would like to share these freebies, please link to the url of this page: http://chineseseoshifu.com/blog/free-china-social-media-icons.html

Compare the SERPs of Top 4 eCommerce Sites on Baidu

David — Fri, 21 Sep 2012 17:32:19 +0000

It’s well acknowledged in the SEO world that search engine results pages (SERPs) are a very valuable source of insights. You can really find a great deal of interesting information there, from competitiveness, search engine algo changes, to user intents. Today I will take a look at the SERPs of the top 4 Chinese eCommerce websites on Baidu, and get a rough idea of their online marketing strategies.

The 4 Chinese ecommerce websites I have chosen are Amazon.cn, Suning, 360Buy and Gome, and the method I use is pretty straightforward – check their SERPs for branding queries, and compare.

Amazon is branding

It’s pretty obvious that Amazon is working hard to promote their new single-letter domain “z.cn”. The domain of “z.cn” shows up three times, and Amazon is not inserting any generic keywords in their title, which indicates branding is an important part of their online strategy.

Another thing to note is that Amazon integrates Sina Weibo to the SERP, so users can follow their official Weibo account right from the SERP. Amazon currently has only around 200 thousand followers on Weibo, while 360Buy, another key player in the Chinese ecommerce market, has nearly 2 million followers.

What’s more, Amazon has also added an onsite search box there, with popular search queries as the default text in the box.

Suning wants to sell

We can easily find Suning’s strategy is very different. While Amazon is promoting its brand, Suning is still trying to attract customers using low prices, with those competitive prices right in the title.

Suning also adds a search box here, but the default search is “refrigerator”, while that of Amazon is “Dazha crabs” , which is a very popular food as well as a gift between friends and relatives in the coming Mid-Autumn Festival.

360Buy emphasizes quality

360 just kicked off a bloody price war earlier this month, but now it seems 360Buy is shifting their strategy to emphasize the quality of their products instead of low prices.

360Buy also uses a multi-tab design for their promotion section, which makes search engine users able to navigate around to find products in more categories.

Gome, please wake up

Based on the SERPs, it seems Gome now is the only one that is still in the all-out mode in the price war, which is already over actually when 360Buy got back sanity and left, and Suning got back half of theirs.

We can see a lot of competitive prices, such as “iPhone4S for 4089 Yuan”, “400 Yuan off for LED TV”, “100 Yuan Coupon for Orders over 99 Yuan”, etc.

Another reason why I want Gome to wake up is that their major competitor, 360Buy is ranking for their brand name in PPC. This is seriously not good.

To summarize, Amazon is promoting their brand, and the new domain of “z.cn”, and 360Buy has got back sanity by quitting the price war that it started and emphasizes quality, while Suning and Gome are still kind of in the war which the starter has already left.

By the way you may have found the SERPs we looked at are different than normal organic or paid results you are familiar with. That’s because these brands are using a service called “Baidu Brand Promotion”, specifically designed by Baidu to target large companies in the market, with larger display areas and more ways to show the ads.

Is There a Dictatorial Ranking Factor in Search Engine?

Ryan — Wed, 30 May 2012 06:08:44 +0000

Recently I happened to read about a famous economic theory named “Arrow’s paradox“, and inevitably related it to search engines.

Quoted from Wiki:

“The framework for Arrow’s theorem assumes that we need to extract a preference order on a given set of options (outcomes). Each individual in the society (or equivalently, each decision criterion) gives a particular order of preferences on the set of outcomes. We are searching for a preferential voting system, called a social welfare function (preference aggregation rule), which transforms the set of preferences (profile of preferences) into a single global societal preference order. The theorem considers the following properties, assumed to be reasonable requirements of a fair voting method:

1. Non-dictatorship

The social welfare function should account for the wishes of multiple voters. It cannot simply mimic the preferences of a single voter.

2. Unrestricted domain

(or universality) For any set of individual voter preferences, the social welfare function should yield a unique and complete ranking of societal choices. Thus:

It must do so in a manner that results in a complete ranking of preferences for society.
It must deterministically provide the same ranking each time voters’ preferences are presented the same way.

3. Independence of irrelevant alternatives (IIA)

The social preference between x and y should depend only on the individual preferences between x and y (Pairwise Independence). More generally, changes in individuals’ rankings of irrelevant alternatives (ones outside a certain subset) should have no impact on the societal ranking of the subset. (See Remarks below.)”

I personally interpreted the three statements from the perspective of search engines as follows:

if all ranking factors of a search engine rank Page A before Page B, then in the final search engine results, Page A has a better ranking over Page B (Unrestricted domain);
No single ranking factor can ultimately determine the final ranking order of a set of web pages, regardless of ranking orders determined by other ranking factors (Non-dictatorship);
If the ranking orders of A and B determined by all the ranking factors are unchanged, then the final ranking order of A and B is unchanged. We can consider this as a political campaign – say in the first round of voting, Candidate A beats Candidate B, then in the second round of voting, if all the voters don’t change their preferences between A and B, Candidate A will still beat Candidate B, with or without new candidates added, removed etc ((IIA))

The interesting part is the conclusion of Arrow’s paradox is that the three statements above can not be all true at the same time (Mathematical proofs can be found on the Wiki page ).

If Statement 1 and 3 are true, then Statement 2 is false, which means there is a dictatorial ranking factor.

Do you think there is dictatorial ranking factor? If so, what is it possibly?

Let me know your thoughts – feel free to leave a comment, drop me a line at ryan@chineseseoshifu.com or join the LinkedIn discussion here

CN Domains Become Available to Individuals Again

Ryan — Tue, 29 May 2012 14:19:22 +0000

According to news from CNNIC (China Internet Network Information Center) on May 28th, new regulations on .cn domain registration will take effect on May 29th 2012, which makes .cn domains available to individuals registrants again.

CN domains have been experiencing ups and downs over the past several years. In 2008, the total number of .cn domains was 13.57 million, the second largest globally, only after .com domains.

Due to loose administration from CNNIC before 2009, the market price of .cn domains was only between 1 to 3 RMB. In 2009, to fight “abusive registration of .cn domain names”, CNNIC suspended .cn domain registration to individuals and .cn domains became only available to enterprises with valid business licenses issued by the Chinese government. During that time, individual.cn domain owners were asked to submit digital copies of their ID cards, and many of the .cn domains were compulsively frozen or cancelled.

By the end of 2011, the total number of .cn domains had decreased to 3.5 million, and total number of websites in China dropped from 2.87 million in 2008 to 1.83 million by the end of 2011.

To avoid the unnecessary trouble and potential risks, Chinese enterprises and webmasters has turned to overseas domain registrars like Godaddy and Name.com. Godaddy has even added Alipay as one of their payment methods to make it easier for their Chinese customers to purchase domains or other services from them.

Should You Register and Use CN Domains?

One of the common questions many clients come to us with is if they need .cn domains for their Chinese websites. Our answer has never changed: No, even when .cn domains were as cheap as only 3 RMB yuan.

We don’t recommend you to use .cn domains for your company because:

1. Domains should be the property of yourself or your company and you should have full control over them, which you are not able to achieve with Chinese registrars;

2. CN domains don’t give you any extra benefits when it comes to SEO, user experience or even branding.

Don’t let the same dog bite you twice.

Then What Domains Should You Use?

Common ones are the best – .com, .net or .org.

For SEO purpose, avoid using discounted domains such as .info or free domains like .tk and .co.cc, just in case domain extensions like that have or will become a signal search engines take to cluster low quality websites.

If you have other questions on Chinese domain registration, feel free to leave a comment or contact us at hi@chineseseoshifu.com

An Overview of Popular Online Payment Methods in China

Nicole — Sat, 21 Apr 2012 20:07:16 +0000

How to be paid timely and safely is a major concern to foreign businesses that want to enter China’s market, especially when you own an online shop. Some clients of ours decided to go with credit cards like they did in other countries when they first came to China. This, unfortunately, was a bad choice that shut the door on a large part of their customers when these customers had just happily picked some items, rushed to the shopping cart and was going to pay them…

A quick fact: in 2011, the total number of credit cards in China is around 268 million – that’s around one in five Chinese people has a credit card. Hmmm, wait a minute, that doesn’t sound bad, does it? But the thing is credit card owners don’t use them to shop online. Read on.

What on the earth do the Chinese people use to make payments online?

Below is a chart that illustrates the market share of online payment services regarding transaction volume in Q4, 2011, according to Analysys International, a provider of information product, service and solution in China internet market:

Here is the list:

Alipay
Tenpay
Online Bank Transfer
99Bill
China PnR
YeePay
Huanxun IPS

What the payment methods should your online store support?

The ultimate combination is Alipay + online bank transfer. Because:

Alipay is the most widely used and loved online payment method here;
Most online stores are using the combination here in China. That’s something;
People use Tenpay are very possibly also Alipay users, so you don’t necessarily need a Tenpay account for Tenpay users;
Online banks are for those who have no Alipay accounts, and very possibly no Tenpay and others either.

A little more about Alipay:

Alipay is an online payment service that belongs to the Alibaba group and supported by Alibaba, Taobao and an increasing number of independent online stores.

How does Alipay work?

Alipay, different than PayPal, handles online payments in a way that is called escrow and values buyer protection very much, which mainly goes as follows:

The buyer chooses a product and makes the payment to the seller via Alipay;
Alipay, instead of transferring the money to the seller’s Alipay account immediately, keeps the money as escrow and informs the seller that the buyer has made the payment. At the time the money is neither directly controlled by the buyer nor the seller;
The seller sends the product to the buyer;
The buyer receives the product, and makes confirmation in their Taobao or Alipay account;
Alipay receives the buyer’s confirmation, and sends the money to the seller.

This is kind of the reason why Alipay is so much loved by the buyers.

You may be wondering what if the buyer is the evil one, and doesn’t confirm the receipt? Taobao and Alipay do have a solution. They track the No. of the express delivery to monitor the status of the product and if the buyer takes no actions in 7 days, or 14 days in some cases, the product will be automatically confirmed by the system and the money will be sent to the seller’s Alipay account.

How can you get yourself an Alipay account?

If you don’t have a valid ID card or business certificate issued by the Chinese government, getting an Alipay account is a little harder. You need to upload a digital copy of your passport to verify your own identity, an entry permit, a Chinese bank account, and a native Chinese guarantor that needs to provide his/her own ID card number to verify his/her own identity.

Moreover, Alipay has enterprise solutions for overseas companies that need to collect payments from their Chinese buyers in RMB.

Having other questions on how to receive payments from your Chinese customers? Don’t hesitate to leave a comment or reach us at hi@chineseseoshifu.com.

The Comprehensive List of Chinese Keyword Research Tools

Ryan — Tue, 13 Mar 2012 13:54:43 +0000

You need to rely on Chinese keyword research tools when you want to use search marketing to promote your products to China. Keyword research sounds easy but building up a comprehensive keyword database for your specific industry that is easy to maintain and extend requires more than just downloading the csv file from your Google Keyword Tool, especially when it comes to a language you are not very familiar with.

There are a bunch of handy tools that can get you started in Chinese keyword research, and today I’m going to put up a list of keyword tools you can use in different stages of your search marketing campaigns.

1. Chinese Keyword Research Tools That Everybody Uses

Baidu Keyword Tool is integrated with Baidu’s pay-per-click advertising platform Baidu PPC Phoenix Nest, or shortened to Baidu PPC, which means it requires a valid Baidu PPC account to use it.
Google Adwords Keyword Tool - I bet you know it well, or you can…okay I seriously bet you know it well.

2. Chinese Keyword Trending Tools:

Baidu Index is a keyword trending tool officially offered by Baidu and available to the public. One thing to note is that the number it gives to each search query is not the daily search volume, but a figure calculated based on the real daily search volume on all Baidu’s search products including web search, image search and video search, and user and media attention. Based on statistics we have observed, the real search volume is usually around 1.6 to 2.0 times the Baidu index figure. We had an early post that talks about how to use Baidu Index for keyword research purpose.
Google Trends China
Google Insights China

3. Hot Keyword or Trends

Baidu Top Searches (Baidu Feng Yun Bang in Chinese pinyin) offers a comprehensive list of top search queries that cover many industries. The data is very helpful for you to learn interesting yet valuable facts like how user intents have shifted in your specific industry over the time. I remember Google used to offer a similar service called Google Rebang, and has shut it down.

Other tools include Sogou Hot List and SoSo Hot List, which has very similar functions, if not exactly the same, that Baidu Top Searches offers.

4. China Social Media Keyword Tools

Weibo Search is the search tool offered by Sina Weibo. It monitors the content, topics and searches on Weibo and offers hot keyword lists for 6 major categories, including general, entertainment, people, news ,finance and sports. If you are from the media industry, it is a gold mine.

5. Search Engine Dropdown Keyword Suggestions

The dropdown keyword suggestions are offered by many search engines including Google and Baidu, which can be another good source for popular keywords.

Extracting the dropdown keyword suggestions one by one manually is easy but it requires a little background knowledge on HTTP and programming to do it automatically. Taking Baidu for example, if you look at the HTTP request and response information using HttpFox in Firefox, you will find the data can be got by using a simple GET method.

For the query “NBA”:

The HTTP request sent to Baidu’s server is

GET /su?wd=NBA&p=3&cb=window.bdsug.sug&t=1331630605111

The HOST is “suggestion.baidu.com”

And the returned content is in JSON format, which contains the related search queries that we want:

window.bdsug.sug({

q:”NBA”,

p:true,

s:["NBA","NBA直播","NBA中文网","NBA直播吧","NBA录像","NBA赛程表","NBA全明星赛2012","NBA2k12","NBA排名","NBA2k11中文版"]

});

You can use the method to extract the keyword suggestions from Google too, as the logic behind is the same.

6. Organic Keyword Data in Web Analytics Tools

Long-tail keywords are hard or sometimes impossible to predict so they can be only “come up with” after visitors already use that keyword to find your website. Popular Chinese web analytics tools include CNZZ, Baidu Analytics and of course, Google Analytics, all of which track the organic search information of your website.

7. Keyword Mining via Competitor Analysis

There are also third party tools that can tell you what keywords your competitors are ranking for. In the English search marketing world there are SEMRush, KeywordSpy, and SpyFu, while when it comes to Chinese keyword research, the best competitor analysis tool is Aizhan, which targets Baidu specifically and free.

And finanly, what’s your secret weapon for keyword research?