Use Search Engine To Compare Popularity of Chinese Websites

Written by Tangos on October 1, 2007
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Almost everyone in China’s Internet industry knows that Alexa data is not so reliable, since many Chinese websites tried to cheat Alexa. But when we don’t have another option, we have to count on Alexa, and it seems a Chinese company has partnered with Alexa to provide its Chinese version.

Is there any other method? When most users has been accustomed to using search engine, I think we can assume the number of searches in China’s main search engine will reflect the relative popularity of websites. It may be a more reliable source.

The top three search engine services in China are Baidu, Google and Yahoo respectively, all of them provide tools for you to compare the search volumes by users.

Baidu Index

Baidu IndexBaidu Index is a service similar to Google Trends. Baidu Index use the number of Baidu web searches by users and Baidu News reference volume to compute an index and generate graph which shows the popularity of a specific term. The graph for time frame of a month, a quarter, half a year and a year is available.

You can use it to compare up to 3 different terms by separating each with a comma. If you want to contain either of two terms, you can separate those terms with “+”. For example, the following screenshot is the graph of Baidu Index of Tudou.com and Youku.com, two leading video sharing websites, in last six months.

Baidu Index

Baidu Index also allows you to log in to save your comparison and keep monitoring them, but the Baidu Index account is invitation only. Anyway, you can still use Baidu Index to compare different websites without an account.

Google Trends

Google TrendsGoogle Trends offers similar service as Baidu Index, it also helps you to know and compare the search volume of specific terms in Google web search, and news reference volume. In Google Trends, if you want to contain either of two terms, you should use a vertical bar, i.e. “|”. For example, the following screenshot is the result of Google Trends on Tudou.com and Youku.com.
Google Trends

Besides Google Trends, Google China’s Rebang has a top 50 search for China’s websites.

Yahoo China Buzz

Yahoo BuzzYahoo China is the third most used search engine by Chinese users. Yahoo Buzz is something like Baidu Index and Google Trends, but has better features. You can compare the search volume of different terms in Yahoo Buzz as in Baidu Index and Google Trends, it shows the change in last week, last month and last quarter, and displays the graph as well. You can use its Flash-based graph to change time frame conveniently.

Yahoo Buzz

All of these services are search keyword based, but sometimes it is hard for you to include all possible search terms for a website. Yahoo Buzz can let help you find related search terms to help you to dig the results. For example, you can find the related search terms for 土豆网, then you can adjust your terms to compare websites more effectively.

Conclusion

Of course, using users search volume to compare popularity of different websites has its obvious limitation, because it only include the traffic from search engine, but does not consider the traffic from referring sites and direct access. It biases toward websites whose traffic mainly comes from search engine.

However, since search is becoming the database of intention of Internet users, I believe search volume can still be a good reference to evaluate the popularity of websites. So next time when you want to evaluate a Chinese website, you can have a try, besides using Alexa data.

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4 Responses to “Use Search Engine To Compare Popularity of Chinese Websites”

  1. B2B web sites - where to look for ‘real’ data | Business Web Reviews on October 2nd, 2007 1:06 am

    […] The China Web 2.0 Review blog has an interesting post today on this topic. It talks about the potential to use search engines to compare web sites’ popularity. The basic principle appears to be that the more times people have searched for a particular site would indicate (a) that it is more popular than others and (b) that its traffic may be comparably higher. Those who rank poorly on these tests would, of course, argue that it’s simply because those doing the searches are not regular users and that may be a fair point. […]

  2. John Koorn on October 10th, 2007 1:37 pm

    But this is for checking specific search terms, eg, tequila, not specific URL’s like Alexa, right? Or is there a way to see how often Google, Baidu or Yahoo directs traffic to a certain site?

    Don’t quite understand how to use this for analyzing…! Help would be appreciated :) .

  3. Tangos on October 11th, 2007 10:37 am

    @John Koorn, yes, it is for checking specific search terms, usually the name of the website. In fact, Yahoo China’s Buzz service has a feature for you to use URL to check the traffic. However, as you may know, Yahoo China’s search service only account for less than 3% market share, I don’t think it would be very useful.

  4. alexa toolbar & widgets ranking on April 21st, 2008 2:58 pm

    If you depend on link or site selling as a form of monetization you will definitely want to increase your http://www.alexa.com/data/details/main?url=www.fortunehotels.in Alexa rank, because it will increase your bargaining power when it comes to ad pricing.

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