A couple of days ago a journalist acquaintance called and asked me what I thought about the anti-trust and fraud lawsuit that may be filed against Baidu. Her timing was good because I'd spent a large chunk of last Sunday writing a long post about Baidu. If you're wondering why you didn't read it, it's because in moment of dumb tab management I accidentally deleted it rather than post it. It still hurts. It took me a few days to get over my sorrow and take another crack. Here it is again, slightly condensed from its original form, and perhaps better for it.
What I told the journalist is that I don't think the lawsuit is the real problem. Baidu's problem is whether or not its users see its search returns as relevant. Revelance is the oxygen of search engines. Google became popular because it consistently and quickly returned more relevant results to users than other search engines. Baidu held off Google in China because for a long time many Chinese people thought its results were more relevant. It also, of course, has its legally gray but incredibly popular MP3 search, which accounts for a lot of its traffic.
Baidu has had two recent crises that have damaged perceptions of the relevance of its search results. The first is the alleged removal of negative search returns for dairy company Sanlu during that company's own recent crisis. The second, and more recent, is the scandal involving the selling of listings in organic search returns on certain keywords to what turned out to be unlicensed medical companies, which was revealed in a CCTV report.
Internet users and media consumers in China know that the government controls coverage of sensitive stories, both in print and online, and they don't tend to hold media companies (I include Baidu in this category) accountable for that. But if users think a search engine is selling out the quality of its search returns for commercial reasons, they will be less forgiving. Users also have an alternative that they can switch to easily in the form of Google, which is continually improving its product. This vulnerability will become more acute when, sooner or later, the MP3 search business is legislated out of existence or becomes too much of a litigation magnet. Remember, Baidu is NASDAQ listed, and can be punished in ways that many local companies cannot.
Baidu's challenge is now to demonstrate that its search product, which is the foundation of its current business and every other business it wants to build, is still the best one for Chinese users because it gives them the most relevant results. One step that Baidu has reportedly taken is sending a group of tourists on a luxury junket to Hong Kong. While that's in keeping with local PR tradition, it's probably not a long-term solution. More encouragingly, the company has pledged to overhaul (though, as near as I can tell, not necessarily eliminate) its practice of selling inclusion in "organic" search listings.
That's a start. Ultimately, however, Baidu needs to think very hard about its overall business model and the relationship between the advertising it sells and the search results it delivers to users. Search engine results are a signal-to-noise challenge. How much junk do you have to wade through and how many blind alleys do you have to follow before you find what you really want? Google has proven that advertising, if handled correctly, can be as relevant as organic search returns. It has, however, given itself a measure of safety by keeping paid returns clearly separate from organic ones. This makes sense because organic returns are algorithmically generated, while the paid ones are based on keyword bidding. The ads may be relevant, but you can always see just how well the search itself is performing. Also, users are often interested in specifically non-commercial results (like blog postings).
I will go out on a limb and say that it's not necessarily bad for Baidu to sell inclusion in "organic" search returns. I don't even think Baidu necessarily has to disclose when it has done so. But if Baidu is going to sell inclusion in search returns, and especially if it isn't going to transparently flag paid placement, it undertakes a huge extra burden. Google's algorithm decides the relevance of organic search returns in relation to a given keyword or keywords. Only rarely, if ever, does a human element intrude, and ads and paid listings are kept separate. But if Baidu is going to sell unmarked inclusion in organic results then its salespeople have to do the vetting and make sure that their sales don't degrade the signal-to-noise ratio. This introduces a lot of human judgment and fallibility into the process, especially if the incentives are designed to encourage sales over screening for relevance. As for selling the removal of information from organic results, I can't think of any commercial justification. It's a PR disaster and it should never happen again.
Search engine results also confer legitimacy (something that search engine users need to be cautious about, since listings can be gamed on any search engine, if only temporarily). Right or wrong, even though we're innately sceptical of advertising we expect companies or information in the first screen or two of organic listings to be of high quality. We're a little more suspect of listings on the 93rd page of results. As the medical company scandal showed, that legitimacy should be sold only with caution and proper due diligence. After all, if a radio station sells ads that drive listeners away or flog bogus products, it won't stay in business for very long. It's easy to listen to another radio station, and it's easy to switch to another search engine.
So while it might not be necessary to disclose paid listings or, better yet, separate them from organic ones, it is the simplest and most elegant and effective way to defend the quality of Baidu's flagship product in the long term. If Baidu won't do that, then at the very least it has to be completely transparent about how it screens and vets companies for paid inclusion in organic results and it has to be willing to absorb the consequences when, inevitably, that system goes awry. This would be a poor alternative, however.
Personally, I like the idea of a local challenger to Google and I'd like Baidu to succeed. But if Baidu wants to hold off Google and build a business that can prosper in the long run it has to rethink the "search engine with Chinese characteristics" approach. Google isn't sitting still in China, and if Chinese users start doubting the relevance of Baidu's search returns it won't be long before the Internet search market-share figures are reversed and Baidu becomes Accoona, or one more victim of the Google juggernaut.
From imgethief
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