If the stock market is any indication of a search engine’s success, then I suggest we start paying attention to Baidu, the most popular Chinese search engine.
Today, while looking at Google’s stock performance, fantasizing going back in time and investing in Google’s IPO at $85, I came across a very interesting trend. Baidu’s performance looks very similar to Google a few years ago.
This is from 2005 to 2007…
Stock growth for Baidu, Google and Yahoo! (2005 - 2007) . Google Finance.
and this is 2009 till today…
Stock growth for Baidu, Google and Yahoo! (2009 - today). Google Finance
I don’t pretend to infer that in a couple of years Baidu will become what Google is today – though, who knows. What I do think is going to continue happening is that Baidu is going to become as important as Yahoo or Bing for international SEO. It would be interesting, for example, how many people use Baidu.com in Vancouver, which is as international as you can get.
If Baidu continues with this growth rate it would only make sense for them to give it a shot at the English market. Why not? The massive Chinese support could allow for Baidu to develop features that could compete with Google.
Am I crazy here or is time to:
- Invest in Baidu
- Pay attention from an SEO perspective
- Stop disallowing Baidu from crawling your sites (you know who you are!)
Having said that I’m not an investor. So don’t go blaming me for losing all your money. If you make a lot, of course, consider where you got the tip and share 🙂
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