Introduction to Search Engine Marketing: A Global Perspective - SES China Day 1

NOTE: I'm not posting verbatim. It's in the first person because it's easier for me to write that way ;) also, some of the Mandarin to English translations made no sense to me and were conveniently left out.

Speakers: Chris Sherman, Yu Yang (CEO - Analysys International) and Peter Lu (Senior Analyst - China Internet Network Information Center)

Chris talked about SEO 101 stuff so chose not to cover it since I assume most SER visitors are already familiar with it. The auditorium was packed. From my conversations with Chinese business owners, there's a genuine interest in SEO/SEM. Chinese business owners believe that for their brick and mortar businesses to thrive, their websites must be seen by more and more buyers.

Yu Yang's Speech

Analysys International is one of the biggest marketing research outfit in China with over 70 analysts entirely focused on the tech space. Their company is centered on this philosophy: finding the fact, predicting the future, helping business.

The Chinese search engine user group has developed very fast.

1. 100 million users
2. majority of people who are online use search: 84% of the 100 million are search engine users; a user is defined as someone who "uses" a search engine at least once a week./li>
3. 65% of the 100 million are less than 30 years old

Althought search engines are in the top 3 Internet destinations, brand loyalty is something search engines need to work hard on. When users fail to find the info they want, they switch to the next search engine 40% of the time.

Peter Lu's Speech

The China Internet Network Information Center carries out new market research every 6 months so even though their data may be dated, it's still relevant. Methodology: telephone surveys in Beijing, Shanghai or Guangzhou.

Users primary search engine of choice: Baidu (50% of netizens - is that conclusive?)

Baidu is very popular among students (takes 40% of total search engine market); there's a general perception that students only really use Baidu to search for MP3. In government and in companies, Google has a larger market share. In Shanghai, Google and Baidu are neck to neck.

The higher the income, the more the person uses Google. Definition of "high end user" is RMB 3,000month in salary.

Eighty four percent of Chinese netizens have started to use search engines. But in any particular day, only 1/3 of netizens use search engines. In China, internet usage is not a daily thing.

Other statistics:

1. 70% of Chinese netizens use more than 2 search engines.
2. Google the search engine is heavily used for researching travel-related information.
3. 87% of Chinese searchers only choose to see the first page; if they can't find the information they want in the first 10 results, then they switch to another search engine.
4. 25% of Chinese netizens cannot survive without Google (wow talk about brand loyalty)
5. Chinese searchers are becoming more and more sophisticated; searchers are using longer keyword combinations to refine their searches.
6. 80% of netizens don’t know how sites are ranked.
7. very few people know what paid listings are.
8. only 13% of netizens can differentiate paid vs organic listings.