Reuters (www.reuters.com) announced on October 13 that Beijing-based Baidu.com (www.baidu.com), China's largest search engine, has said that its revenues will more than double in 2004 and could double again in 2005 as more companies pay to feature in search results. Baidu boasts 350 million Web pages in its database of searchable sites and counts Google among its investors. The bulk of Baidu's sales comes from sponsored links, where a client pays to have its name and Web site link appear at the top of a results list when particular terms are searched.
Baidu's Chief Financial Officer Shawn Wang told Reuters the company had been boosting revenue by about 150 percent in each of the last two years as its paid search services gained popularity. Baidu co-founder and Chief Executive Robin Li, told Reuters that Baidu expects its revenues to more than double in 2004 from a year earlier, that it really depends on how quickly the market matures and how many small and medium enterprises realize the promotional power a search engine can bring to them, and that his best guess is that in 2005 Baidu’s revenues could double from 2004.
Market research firm Shanghai iResearch (www.iresearch.com.cn) has estimated that Baidu generated about 100 million yuan (6.8 million pounds) in revenue last year, about half that of local rival 3271 Network Software, owned by Yahoo. A recent iResearch survey has also found that Baidu is nearly twice as popular among Chinese Internet users as Google, with a market share of about 49 percent. But competition has been rising after Yahoo beefed up its presence by buying 3721 for $120 million late last year.
