SubscribeBaidu Manipulates Search Rank
All of us may know Baidu mixes organic search results together with paid listing results, however maybe you don’t know Baidu also manipulates rank of results from various websites. Last week, a leaked email proved it. (via csew group (membership required))
Peter Wang, Branding Director of Baidu sent the email to Robin Li, CEO of Baidu, and Dong Liang, VP of marketing of Baidu. In the email, Peter asked for the approval of change the rank of Sina and Sohu. He said Baidu had decreased the rank of Sina previously since Sina published many negative reports on Baidu. So in many search results, the results from Sohu were ranked higher than those of Sina. But recently Sohu is not friendly to Baidu. So he, also requested by an editor of Sina, thought it was time to renew the rank of Sina and decrease that of Sohu.
The email was first published in Donews BBS and TechWeb BBS anonymously, several hours later, the posts were deleted, but the news has spread out and surprised us. The story also got some media reports later. Peter Wang had to resign for the leaked email.
Baidu manipulates search results for its own sakes, will Google benefit from its more reliable results? However, according to a latest research reports by iResearch, Baidu’s market share still keeps increasing.
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[…] According to a leaked email from Peter Wang, Brand Director of Baidu, it seems the biggest search engine in China likes to adjust rankings. From the China Web 2.0 Review In the email [to Robin Lee, CEO of Baidu], Peter asked for the approval to change the rank of Sina and Sohu [2 major Chinese web portals]. He said Baidu had decreased the rank of Sina previously since Sina published many negative reports on Baidu. So in many search results, the results from Sohu were ranked higher than those of Sina. But recently Sohu is not friendly to Baidu. So he, also requested by an editor of Sina, thought it was time to renew the rank of Sina and decrease that of Sohu. […]