Baidu PPC Keyword Quality

The new Baidu PPC platform (aka Phoenix Nest) was launched in April. Baidu’s new PPC algorithm determines a minimum bid (cost-per-click) for each keyword. Your keyword’s maximum CPC bid has to be higher than this minimum bid before the keyword’s corresponding ad will appear in Baidu’s paid search results.

Baidu has been updating keywords’ minimum bids according to search volume and other factors. Alerts regarding keyword minimum bid updates are emailed directly to Baidu’s PPC advertisers.

In the alerts, Baidu shows your keywords’ current maximum bids and the minimum bids required for your keywords to appear in Baidu’s paid search results. For example:

Keyword’s current maximum bid: RMB 0.45
Minimum bid required: RMB 0.50

The short term solution to get your ads show up within Baidu’s paid search results is to raise your keywords’ maximum cost-per-click bids to or above the minimum bids required. However, the most cost effective solution is to improve your keywords’ quality index in your Baidu PPC account. To improve your keywords’ quality index, Baidu suggested you should:

Ensure your keywords are relevance to your products and/or services
Improve each of your keyword’s relevance to the corresponding ad text

This means like with other major search engines (e.g. Google Adwords and Microsoft Adcenter), you should also improve the click through rate (CTR) of your ads (and/or keywords) which is one of the major factors to your Baidu keyword’s quality index.

Baidu Phoenix Nest’s PPC ads have been mainly showing up on the right hand side of Baidu.com. The only exceptions are when ads’ quality is high or competitions are few, Phoenix Nest’s PPC ads will appear above Baidu’s organic search results. Due to search engine users’ click behavior, you should expect Baidu’s right hand side ads to generate lower CTR than those ads on the left hand side (or above the organic search results).

Baidu Huobao text ads are also competing for those right side ad spots against the Phoenix Nest PPC ads. However, regarding ad copy optimization, you should have more control over your Baidu Phoenix Nest ads than those Baidu Huobao ads of your competitors.