27 June 2007
It has been identified that the home grown Chinese search engine, Baidu, captured 62% of the search market, compared to Google’s 20% share? Baidu’s claim is simple – that they understand the Chinese market better. Do Baidu offer Chinese users a more native experience?
The study was conducted by bringing together 50 Chinese students between the ages of 18 and 25 into a lab. They were given a number of tasks, including free searches, including looking for online information about a digital camera. A Tobii eye tracking station was set up to be as native an experience as possible for them, with a Chinese keyboard, Chinese character sets and all prompts in simplified Chinese.
In North America where the same study had previously been conducted, words are scanned and word patterns picked up. In North America words are quickly scanned and determine if they fit in our “semantic maps” (another term covered in our eye tracking studies), but listings aren’t read. Because Chinese is presented as symbols, where sentences take their final meaning from a group of combined symbols, it’s much more difficult to scan this information quickly. In our North American studies, an average interaction with Google lasted about 8 to 10 seconds. In the Chinese study, an average interaction with Google.cn lasted about 30 seconds, and with Baidu over 55 seconds.
By North American standards, Baidu would be a horrible search experience. But the fact evidence still shows that they’re still the preferred choice for the vast majority of Chinese users.
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