Youdao search engine is the 6th largest search engine in China, with search market share behind Baidu.com, Google.com.hk, Sogou.com, Yahoo.cn and Soso.com.

Youdao’s SERP

Youdao search engine’s search engine results page (SERP) consists of:

• A: Youdao’s search box
• B: Youdao’s organic search results
• C: Other vertical searches, including image search, news search, blog search, answers search
• D: Search by day, by week, by month, or by year
• E: What everybody has been searching
• F: Your search history
• G: Related searches

Youdao’s Spider, Youdao’s Index Update

Youdao’s spider (or user agent) is YoudaoBot. How Youdao.com’s spider and index update work:

• To get included into Youdao’s index, your site will need to have inbound links pointing to it from other websites that are already in Youdao’s index.
• Normally, not every web page of your site will be included in Youdao’s index – Youdao’s index only includes web pages that are above a certain level of quality.
• How often a site gets updated in Youdao’s Index depends on how often a webmaster updates his/her site’s content.
• Youdao’s spider (YoudaoBot) normally do not crawl a web page more than once within 8 hours and understands the IF-MODIFIED-SINCE in the HTTP header
• Optimize SEO META tags to allow better crawling and ranking on Youdao search engine.

Submit site to Youdao

Webmasters can manually submit websites to Youdao, through Youdao’s site submission page.

Youdao Robots.txt

To block Youdao’s spider (or YoudaoBot) from crawling part of your website, use Robots.txt:

• How Robots.txt works on Youdao.com is similar to how Robots.txt works on Baidu.com. Review Baidu Robots.txt.
• Place Robots.txt at the root directory of your site:

http://www.example.com/robots.txt

Nofollow for Youdao

Youdao understands nofollow attribute.

• To disallow Youdao’s spider (YoudaoBot) from following links on a web page and passing link juice (similar to Google PageRank) through to other web pages, use:

<META NAME="YoudaoBot" CONTENT="nofollow">

• To disallow Youdao from passing link juice through an individual link (on the “link” level), use:

<a href="http://www.example.com/" rel="nofollow">anchor text</a>

Youdao Vertical Searches

Besides web search, Youdao search engine offers vertical searches including:

• Image search (image.youdao.com/)
• Video search (video.youdao.com/)
• News search (news.youdao.com/)
• Music search (mp3.youdao.com/)
• Blog search (blog.youdao.com/)
• Map search (ditu.youdao.com/)
• Reader (reader.youdao.com/)
• Bookmarks (shuqian.youdao.com/)
• Forums (tie.youdao.com/)
• Dictionary (dict.youdao.com/)
• Translation (fanyi.youdao.com/)
• Shopping search (gouwu.youdao.com/)

Youdao provides desktop tools including:

• Toolbar (toolbar.youdao.com/)
• Desktop Dictionary (cidian.youdao.com/)

View the entire list of Youdao vertical searches (and/or products).

Sogou’s China Search Market Share

Sogou.com is currently the third largest search engine in China that has search market share far behind those of Baidu’s and Google’s. The search market share of Baidu, Google and Sogou in quarter 3 of 2010, according to market research firm Analsys International:

• Baidu: 73%
• Google: 21.6%
• Sogou: 0.9%

Sogou.com’s Web Search

Sogou’s search engine spider/crawler, Sogou web spider, crawls websites in the world wide web and stores web pages in Sogou’s index with preferences and guidelines:

• Sogou web spider prefers unique web content.
• Sogou web spider can crawl web pages stored under several levels of sub-folders/directories, but prefers crawling web pages that are stored closely to the top-level folder/directory.
• Sogou web spider can handle URLs with parameters, but prefers short URLs with few parameters.
• Sogou web spider can follow URLs that use 301-redirect and/or 302-redirect, but may run into problems handling URLs that are configured to redirect multiple times. Review 301-/302-redirects in SEO glossary.
• Sogou web spider follows Robots.txt. Review Baidu Robots.txt for more information on Robots.txt.

Review Sogou.com’s web search help documents.

Submit Sites to Sogou.com

If you want your website to show up in Sogou’s organic web search results, submit your sites to Sogou through the site submission page.

• Submit only your site’s homepage URL.
• Submit your site only once.

Sogou does not guarantee your site being accepted into the organic search results pages at all. However, if your site’s content is acceptable according to Sogou’s content guidelines, it will show up in Sogou.com’s organic web search results pages within a week after submission.

Sogou Labs

Sogou Labs offers algorithms and experiments including:

• R-SpamRank: A spam detection algorithm that is based on link analysis by assigning spam values to web pages and semi-automatically selecting potential spam web pages. The algorithm first manually select a small set of spam pages as seeds. Initial R-SpamRank values are propagated through links and distributed among the whole web page set. Download the spam detection algorithm as *.pdf.

After sorting the pages according to their R-SpamRank values, the pages with high values are selected. Our experiments show that the algorithm is highly successful in identifying spam pages, which gains a precision of 99.1% in the top 10,000 web pages with the highest R-SpamRank values.

• An automatic search engine performance evaluation with click-through data analysis. The evaluation method generates navigational type query topics and answers automatically based on search users’ querying and clicking behavior. Download the evaluation as *.pdf.

Sogou’s Websites

Besides web search, Sogou offers Chinese Internet users:

• Map search: map.Sogou.com
• Image search: pic.Sogou.com
• Video search: v.Sogou.com
• News search: news.Sogou.com
• Music search: mp3.Sogou.com
• Blog search: blogsearch.Sogou.com
• Answers: wenda.Sogou.com
• Daohang: Sogou’s “Daohang” site (123.Sogou.com) is an Internet start page or Chinese world wide web’s yellow pages, similar to Baidu’s hao123.com, that offers lists of “URLs/links” of popular Chinese websites for Sogou’s users.

Sogou’s Free Tools

Sogou also made free tools available for users to download:

• Sogou Chinese input tool (pinyin.sogou.com)
• Soguo Internet browser (ie.sogou.com)

Search Engines’ Official Keyword Research Tools

Search engines Baidu and Google possess the largest Chinese keyword databases and offer official SEM keyword research tools for Chinese keywords:

• Google’s Keyword Tool
• Baidu Keyword Research Tool (requires access to Baidu PPC Phoenix Nest account)

Chinese Keyword Search Trends

Google and Baidu has also made Chinese keyword search trends / insights available through:

• Google Insights for Search and Google Trends in Chinese
• Baidu Index

Hot trends on Chinese keyword searches are provided by Google and other Chinese search engines including Baidu, Sogou and Soso:

• Google China’s ReBang
• Baidu’s Chinese Search FengYun Bang
• Sogou’s Hot Search List
• Soso’s Quick Rank (LongHu Bang)

Other Chinese Keyword Research Tools

Google’s Wonder Wheel Tool offers a different way for keyword research by providing “related keywords” to your core keywords.

Yahoo China’s search results have long been powered by Yahoo’s search algorithm even though Yahoo China has been a web property of Alibaba Group since 2005.

• Yahoo China’s Search Engine URL: www.yahoo.cn

• Yahoo China’s Portal URL: cn.yahoo.com

To continue offering a search function to Chinese web users, Yahoo China will have to seek other replacements.

Why does Yahoo China need quality organic search results?

Yahoo China currently offers a pay per click (PPC) program to advertisers targeting to Chinese web users.

• Pay Per Click Program URL: p4p.cn.yahoo.com

Yahoo China’s PPC system is on a platform that is independent to Yahoo Panama. Sponsored links (PPC ads) are displayed alongside

Alibaba Group has also been syndicating Taobao’s paid ads of products alongside Yahoo China’s search results.

Without high quality web search results from Yahoo’s search technology, it will make no sense to only display Yahoo China’s PPC ads and Taobao’s product ads to Chinese web users.

Can the algorithms of Google, Baidu or Soso power Yahoo China search?

With years of experience in web search technologies, both Google and Baidu are definitely able to offer Chinese search algorithms that can fit Yahoo China’s exact requirements. Soso, the search engine of Tencent, has also started developing its own search technologies.

However, with Baidu’s and Tencent’s ambitions in China’s B2C and C2C markets, Alibaba Group may have already perceived Baidu, Soso and even Google as direct competitors and will not help Taobao’s competitors to grow reputations through their search algorithms.

Should Yahoo China search be powered by Microsoft Bing’s algorithm?

Microsoft will definitely want to expand its search market share in China. It will depend on how much advertising profit will Alibaba Group share with Microsoft when using Bing’s search algorithm on Yahoo China search engine.

Should Yahoo China develop its own new algorithm?

Yahoo China search engine will not be able to take advantage from Alibaba.com’s and Taobao.com’s current search engine technologies. The B2B and C2C sites’ search algorithms are product search based which are totally different from web search engines’ algorithms.

Should Alibaba Group sell Yahoo China back to Yahoo?

Selling Yahoo China back to Yahoo will immediate allow Yahoo China search engine to be powered by Bing’s search algorithm. However, evidence indicated that Alibaba Group is in the process of separating Yahoo China’s operations from the rest of Chinese subsidiaries.

• Koubei.com recently has spinned off from Yahoo China, and merged into Taobao.com
• Koubei’s classifieds originally displayed on Yahoo China will all be moved to Taobao

Jack Ma to decide Yahoo China’s future destiny

CEO Jack Ma believed Alibaba Group has the right to decide Yahoo China’s destiny and insisted that Yahoo is only one of the shareholders of Yahoo China.

MP3 and Music Search

Google China decided to partner with Top100.cn to compete with Baidu’s free MP3 search by offering free music search (Google Music Search). The music search was quietly launched and is currently still not listed on Google China’s “More Product” page (www.google.cn/intl/zh-CN/options/).

Large part of Baidu’s success has been credited to its free music search engine (mp3.baidu.com), with most of the music files found by Baidu being pirated. Baidu managed to win after the Chinese Court ruling in which Baidu did not infringe copyright by just linking to infringing music.

Rankings on Organic Search and Paid Search

Google China determined to shut down all digital advertising agents that have been inappropriately reselling Google’s paid search advertising services (Adwords).

Baidu was accused of deliberately manipulating the organic search rankings to increase sales on paid search advertising, but denied such accusations. However, Baidu repeatedly insisted its commitment to clearly separate sponsored links from natural search results by launching a project codenamed “Phoenix Nest”.

Enforcing Policies

Google published some comprehensive policies for users who are to advertise in China. Under the policies, advertisers of many product categories (for example, health supplement, medical services, and so on) are required to submit business licenses and approval certificates.

Baidu slipped up again by allowing some unlicensed health-care companies to place top spot ads in its search results. In November, Baidu’s traffic was affected and it triggered a traffic surge for Google.

C2C Market

Baidu entered China’s C2C battle to compete with Alibaba group’s Taobao.com by launching its C2C site Youa.Baidu.com. Shortly afterwards, Taobao.com stopped all its advertisements from appearing on Baidu and disabled itself from being indexed by Baidu.com. Baidu’s Youa countered by providing users easy tools to automatically export all their product data from Taobao and other C2C sites to Youa.

Google made no progress towards China’s C2C market and stayed away from one of its many unfamiliar Chinese territories.

How other blogs talked about Baidu vs Google in China:

• Google’s Real Fight in China
• Baidu: Slience is Not Golden, It’s Poison
• Google Aims to Crack China with Music Push

1. Google Sites – 62.4%
2. Yahoo! Sites – 12.8%
3. Baidu.com Inc – 5.2%
4. Microsoft Sites – 2.9%
5. NHN Corporation – 2.4%
6. eBay – 2.2%
7. Time Warner Network – 1.6%
8. Ask Network – 1.1%
9. Yandex – 0.9%
10. Alibaba.com Corporation – 0.8%

Baidu.com and Alibaba.com captured 3.4 billion searches and 531 million searches respectively in December. The top 10 do not only consist of the ‘traditional’ search engines, as eCommerce search engines in B2C (e.g. eBay) and B2B (e.g. Alibaba.com) sectors are also in the list. This may mean users rely greatly on doing search queries via eCommerce search engines, and therefore these vertical search engines should take the opportunities to invest to further improve their search engine usabilities and search result relevance.

In December 2007, 66.2 billion search queries were conducted worldwide. Baidu.com Inc was the third ranked search property worldwide with 3.4 billion searches, capturing 5.2 percent of worldwide search share.

It is believed the newly launched search homepage will bring a more Chinese localized look-and-feel and will also improve usability. Earlier this year China Yahoo! became the official name instead of the old name Yahoo! China, which was an early sign of effort in localizing Yahoo! in China.

In terms of the Chinese language naming convention, it actually sounds a little more formal and convenient to pronounce China Yahoo! than the other way around.

Although on the China Yahoo! web search home page, you can’t see the new logo.

One of the evidences to support this saying can be found with its recent re-launch of Yisou. Yisou is believed to be a research platform of search technologies for Yahoo! China, very much like Google Search Mash.

In late 2005, Yisou terminated its operation in late 2005 after Yahoo China’s acquisition by Alibaba. At that time Yisou’s Chinese name means “One-search”. After the re-launch, its new name will mean “Easy-to-search”. For those who are not familiar with Chinese (Mandarin) pinyin, yi can mean either easy or one in Chinese.

For now, Yahoo.cn remains the major search service provided by Yahoo! to Chinese users.

• cnki.net is a national web project of search program that cost 345 million Chinese yuan.
• cnki.net provides contents of 6642 academic periodicals as research sources to China’s Internet users.
• This academic web project has been carried out by Qinghua University and Qinghua Tongfang Internet Technology Co Ltd.

Updated

Google offers vertical search on books and academics:

• Book search
• Scholar search
• Advanced scholar search

The 114 search engine provides web search and 4 search verticals:

• Forum search
• Blog search
• News search
• Yellowpages

Microsoft currently trails far behind Baidu, Google China, Yahoo China, Sogou and iAsk with less than 1% of China’s search market:

• Baidu Gaining 2006 China Search Market Share

Search engine revenues generated through the 114 search engine will be shared by China’s Telecom (70%) and Microsoft (30%),

In 2007, 70% revenues will go to China’s Telecom and 30% to Microsoft.
In 2007, 50% revenues will go to China’s Telecom and 50% to Microsoft.

Microsoft will also pay China Telecom an once-off income of 21 million US dollar (unconfirmed figure). Microsoft will be tabbing into China Telecom’s customer base of 25 million broadband users and over 80 million Internet users.