Baidu traffic - useful or useless?

[RDude]

From what I can see, Baidu is an asian based search engine. I'm seeing a lot of traffic coming from it. Like...a lot. ;)

Sales were a bit better this weekend for me, so it's possible hits from Baidu had something to do with it. Nothing to write home about mind you, but better than last weekend at least.

So...is Baidu traffic useful or useless? There seems to be unbelievable amounts of hits coming from it. The ratio of hits versus sales isn't great. However, this might not be due to Baidu traffic, but rather the sales slump at the moment.

Your thoughts?

[Richard]

Baidu is good - They are bigger than google in some areas.

[dzinerbear]

Where's the traffic coming from though? If it's coming from Asia, you're probably attracting more hotlinkers than buyers.

[basschick]

all asian traffic is not equal. for example japan traffic is great - lots of buyers. chinese traffic hotlinks a lot, and in ways that are hard to block, but buys very rarely.

[dzinerbear]

You're right, Butch Dixon does get regular sales from Japan. Is Baidu a Chinese or Japanese search engine?

[RDude]

You're right, Butch Dixon does get regular sales from Japan. Is Baidu a Chinese or Japanese search engine?

Yes, good question. From looking at the word Baidu and the writing on the engine, it does look Japanese. That would be a good sign. ;)

Thanks for the info too folks. Very helpful.

[pocoloco]

The original Baidu search engine started in China and is run by Chinese, but nowadays there is a seperate Baidu search for Japan as well.

[RDude]

The original Baidu search engine started in China and is run by Chinese, but nowadays there is a seperate Baidu search for Japan as well.

So how do we know which is which? LOL. Is baidu.com Chinese?

[pocoloco]

So how do we know which is which? LOL. Is baidu.com Chinese?

I think Baidu.com is Chinese, since Baidu Japan uses www.baidu.jp

Funny thing is that baidu.jp is blocked by Chinese ISP's due to porn that comes up in their SERPs.

[RDude]

Hmm interesting. So that traffic, for the most part, is wonky at best. I'm going to have to check out where sales have been coming from lately. They jumped up again a bit for me and it would be intriguing to see if this traffic is converting. From what I hear though, that's unlikely.

Thanks for the info!

[HunkMoneyLuke]

Chinese traffic can still be valuable if you can sell it or trade it, even at a 100:1 return ratio its still better than nothing

[jeffrey]

Hey we have two Chinese language sites www.jetwang.net (Jetwang.com is English) and www.man419.com. Both are in Mandarin which is typically mainland Chinese – Cantonese tends to be HK and Taiwan.

But we seem to get a good response from organic SEO from Baidu. However the traffic is not always “buyers” but tend to be “tire kickers”. I will note that Baidu traffic tends to have a smaller bounce rate, and more time spent on the site – for whatever that’s worth. But mainland Chinese users tend not be as comfortable as making purchases with their credit cards online. But you can’t help but wonder 1 billon consumers surely they’ll end up in your lap sooner or later, god knows Americans and Europeans have no money any more - LOL

Cheers,

Jeffrey Peel

Jeff [at] vqcash.com

[rawTOP]

Hey we have two Chinese language sites www.jetwang.net (Jetwang.com is English) and www.man419.com. Both are in Mandarin which is typically mainland Chinese – Cantonese tends to be HK and Taiwan.

Isn't the written language (and hence websites) the same across different dialects? My bf is Chinese and he seems to think so (though he doesn't speak it - he's 4th generation on one side and 2nd generation on the other). For example, Brits use "spunk" pretty frequently, where Americans use "cum", but if English were a character based language wouldn't the character for "spunk" and "cum" be pretty much the same thing?

I guess what I'm saying is I don't get how a Chinese website wouldn't service everyone who speaks Chinese... Hell, my Chinese mother-in-law can communicate with Japanese if she writes things out and that really is a different language.

Here's Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Chinese_dialects)'s take on it...


Purely from a linguistic point of view, many of these idioms seem to meet the criteria of a language. On the other hand, to a large degree the various Chinese idioms share a common written language and literature, lending weight to calling them "dialects". Because the written language is grammatically closest to Standard Mandarin, many Chinese speakers view Standard Mandarin as "the Chinese language", and everything else as dialects.

[jeffrey]

Isn't the written language (and hence websites) the same across different dialects? My bf is Chinese and he seems to think so (though he doesn't speak it - he's 4th generation on one side and 2nd generation on the other). For example, Brits use "spunk" pretty frequently, where Americans use "cum", but if English were a character based language wouldn't the character for "spunk" and "cum" be pretty much the same thing?

I guess what I'm saying is I don't get how a Chinese website wouldn't service everyone who speaks Chinese... Hell, my Chinese mother-in-law can communicate with Japanese if she writes things out and that really is a different language.

Here's Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Chinese_dialects)'s take on it...

My take on it would be the similarities of those using a Latin alphabet or a Cyrillic alphabet (Russia / Ukrainian) would have some mutual intelligibility. For instance I can generally read French and most Spanish having learned some of those languages but also applying my use of the Latin alphabet and loan words and the core of some words. Like in French "La Pays du Russe et une pays tres grand" - in English " the country of Russia is a very large country". But even in English there are American and "Standard" idioms. Most Canadian's and Australians would understand many British idioms, (particularly Australians) that would make an American pause. Similar but not the same - read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutual_intelligibility

Jeffrey Peel
jeff [at] vqcash.com

[rawTOP]

My take on it would be the similarities of those using a Latin alphabet or a Cyrillic alphabet (Russia / Ukrainian) would have some mutual intelligibility.

I think you missed my point. The Chinese don't write out out their words the way they sound. They basically write in pictures. Those pictures are not the equivalent of Latin or Arabic characters because they express a complete concept, not a sound. Because of that Chinese characters can be (and are) pronounced differently in different dialects, but the written language for all of them is the same (Chinese even shares many characters with Japanese). Because the written language is the same, a website written by a person in one dialect of Chinese can service all the other dialects of Chinese. There might be a few characters/words or ways of phrasing things that are unique to a particular dialect, but 99% of the written language is the same across the dialects. So I think your website written by someone "in Mandarin" can actually service all of China - it's not limited to those who speak Mandarin.

At least that's my understanding - I'm asking whether it's true. Lloyd - can you ask your boyfriend?