Baidu announced the drop of its separate news source database due to “technology upgrade on timeliness content identification”.

The best source websites in the original news source library will be invited to join the Webmasters VIP Club, who have the opportunity to be given priority listing in the time-sensitive search results. Those not in VIP Club still have chances to be shown in the timeliness results.

Those not in VIP Club still have chances to be shown in the timeliness results. Baidu’s Webmasters VIP Club is now limited to news sites and will roll out invitations to other categories of websites in the future.

Benefits of Baidu Webmasters VIP Club

After the recent upgrade to its VIP Club for Webmasters, Baidu no longer limits the access to the large websites. Vertical websites with quality and original content will gradually have opportunities to apply for access. The VIP Club provides:

• Priority request management
• Notifications on website problems
• Opportunities to make changes before being penalized
• Access to new tools
• Offline events

Currently, webmasters can register and get access to Baidu Webmasters, a platform similar to Google Webmasters that users and add websites, submit sitemaps, diagnose indexing problems, and etc.

This VIP Club looks like a stepped up efforts for quality content from Baidu and premium search console with additional benefits for webmasters and offline training.

Also read: A Quick Guide for Baidu Mobile SEO

Mobile users are sometimes forced to initiate or download an app to continue viewing further content while visiting a web page via search engine, which can be quite annoying to users. 

Take one of the popular audio sharing platform Ximalaya as an example:

When a user enters the website via mobile search, it interrupts the user journey and forces the users to download or use the mobile app. Baidu mobile search will significantly lower the rankings of such pages; so, companies should avoid implementing such practices.

Optimizing for Baidu Mobile Search

Domains and servers. Baidu recommends simple and short domain names as they are easier for remember. Businesses should select stable and good performing servers. Baidu also recommends fully-responsive HTML5 designs to build websites. Keep in mind that page loading speed is a very important ranking factor.

Machine readable. Baidu crawls, processes, and indexes mobile web pages via Baiduspider2.0. Currently, Baiduspider can only understand text content and may have difficulty extracting content and links from flash, images, ajax, iframe, and javascript. Use “alt” tag on images.

Flat structure. Baidu recommends mobile sites should have a clear structure and shallow link depth, which allow users to quickly obtain useful information and search engines to quickly understand the structure level. Tree structures are recommended in three levels: homepage » category » details page.

Linking. The ideal site structure is flat tree structure, from the home page to the content page level as little depth as possible. Every page should link to the upper-level page, the next level page, and pages with related content. Important web pages should be near the home page.

In addition, breadcrumb navigation is also important to have for mobile websites.

External links are important for mobile page rankings, including links from PC only pages to mobile pages. Be reminded poor quality external links have a negative impact on your Baidu rankings. You can use Baidu Webmasters to analyze the external links.

URL structure. If your website designs different pages specifically for mobile users, Baidu recommends the use of mobile home page with m.a.com/3g.a.com/wap.a.com (the use of subdirectory such as www.a.com/m/ is not recommended), category pages with m.a.com/n1/、m.a.com/n2/ (it’s better if n1 and n2 can be directly accessed). Details pages should have simple and shorter URLs with few parameters. Different pages with the same content should use 301 Redirect to one unique URL.

Anchor text. The simpler the description of the anchor text is written, the easier it is for the user to understand the purpose of the page. The user discovers that your page is a link from other pages, and the anchor text is the only introduction Baiduspider understands the page.

Anchor text must be accurate; and, incorrect descriptions could get your page penalized.

Tools. You can use Baidu Webmasters to submit a mobile sitemap, check mobile indexing status, and submit 404 removed pages.

If Baidu could not locate proper mobile pages, it will create a transformed mobile page for better user experience. However, it’s not as good as fully responsive HTML5 designed web pages.

Page Title. You should have unique and relevant title for each mobile page, limited to 17 Chinese characters. If more than 17 characters in title, it will be forced to two rows or removed when it’s over 24 characters. Keep the most important words in the beginning of the title. If your brand is well known in China, keep your brand in the title.

Meta data.

Having a unique “description” tag for each page is important. You should also use “applicable-device” tag to inform Baidu of your website mobile adaption status:

• If your web pages are only good for desktop browsing, add <meta name=”applicable-device” content=”pc”>
• If your web pages are only good for mobile devices, add <meta name=”applicable-device” content=”mobile”>
• If your website uses fully-responsive design, add <meta name=”applicable-device” content=”pc,mobile”>

For local content, you can use geo meta tag; for example, if your website targets users in Beijing, you can use “location” meta tag:

<meta name=”location” content=”province=北京;city=北京; coord=116.306522891,40.0555055968″>

Coord is the latitude and longitude coordinates of the page information.

Content design. Baidu recommends 14pt font size for main content (no smaller than 10px), and line spacing of (0.42~0.6)*font size (no lower than 0.2*font size).

If the main content contains multiple images, the images should be set to uniform width and positions. When the content contains multiple text links, the recommended font size is 14px and 13px for the vertical spacing. If the font size is 16px, the vertical spacing recommended is 14px. The clickable text links area is no smaller than 40px

Related post: Baidu version of Google AMP

Baidu released lists of top searched keywords in 2016. Rio Olympics is the top keyword in 2016; VR the most popular technology trend on Baidu; and, the most searched mobile apps are QQ, WeChat, and Baidu Mobile.

Top 10 Keywords in 2016

1. The Rio Olympic Games
2. House prices soared
3. Car license-plate lottery
4. All sectors in China now under value-added tax system
5. Vaccine safety
6. Hukou reform
7. Artificial intelligence
8. Internet finance
9. Anti-corruption
10. Two-child policy

Top 10 International Events

1. South China Sea Arbitration
2. US general election
3. Turkish military coup
4. Brexit
5. Zika virus
6. G20
7. French National Day terrorist attacks
8. Egyptian airlines hijacked
9. Park Geun-hye scandal
10. North Korea nuclear test

Top 10 Technology Keywords

1. VR
2. Gravitational wave
3. AlphaGo
4. Shenzhou-11
5. Driverless vehicle
6. Gene sequencing
7. Baidu brain
8. PowerEgg
9. Bitcoin
10. Atlas

Top 10 Searched Mobile Apps in 2016

1. QQ
2. WeChat
3. Baidu Mobile
4. WiFi Master Key
5. Taobao
6. Baidu Maps
7. iQiyi
8. Alipay
9. Ctrip
10. Weibo

Baidu launched Mobile Instant Page (“MIP”) in August 2016, a similar technology to Google’s AMP.

Google’s AMP, or Accelerated Mobile Pages, is a way to build web pages for static content that render fast. Publishers utilizing AMP deliver much faster page loading speed and better user experience in search.

While most Google services have trouble being accessed in China, Baidu’s MIP can be very helpful for companies targeting China internet users to provide instant page loading experiences on mobile.

Very similar to AMP, Baidu MIP in action consists of three different parts:

• MIP HTML
• MIP JS
• MIP Cache

The loading time of the landing page after implementing MIP are reduced by 30% to 80% according to Gao Lei, senior technology manager at Baidu Search. MIP affects SEO performance as well because it improves loading speed of web pages and “speed” is one important ranking factor.

Baidu might make MIP compatible with AMP in future so that publishers can save development time to utilize both.

Read Baidu Mobile SEO recommendations here »

Baidu launched “image network” in early December 2014. Baidu image network is a platform for sites, agencies, applications and other image related third parties, other than an advertisement network.

Once verified by this platform, websites can get easier indexing by Baidu; and, users can get direct access to those photos and images on Baidu Images. Additional benefits include:

1. A convenient data exchange platform will be provided. High quality images of third parties will be included by Baidu easily which can help bring in more traffic
2. Brand exposure opportunities from Baidu
3. Baidu Image could cooperate with image-related sites, agencies, applications to explore new business models
4. Further, Baidu Image will supply technology interface, large image resources, image storage services

Here are the standards for verification:

1. The third party platforms should be image-related sites, agencies or applications with high quality image resources.
2. The third party platform should be a recognized brand
3. The third party platforms should recognize Baidu Image’s value and are willing to devote themselves to establishing image ecosystem with Baidu.

Whether your website is indexed by Baidu Image or does not affect your application. The sites, agencies or applications which meet the standards may or may not pass the verification.

Also read: Baidu Offers Easier Way for China Internet Users to Access Google

Push Negative Search Results Down

This tactic applies to all search engine negative results management. What you need to do is push up the positive content results on Baidu relevant search queries. The lower the negative listing, the less exposure and damaging it will do as generally speaking, lower positions get lower click through rate and hence less clicks. Your goal is to optimize non-negative content’s rankings on Baidu SERPs. And, the first thing you should do is to identify the relevant keywords which can often be grouped to two categories: generic brand terms, “brand + incident/events” terms. There are many tactics you can implement to push down those negative results; you should consult your agency or internal expert for details. One popular tactic I deployed for clients in the past is to utilize relevant and authoritative online news websites to publish articles on target search queries as Baidu display listings from news websites on top of SERP when the topic is hot.

Remove Negative Results from Baidu

Baidu does deal with fake content and you just need to report the links that contains unreal information defaming your brand or companies. Simply locate the corresponding search result and click on “report” link: Before you click on the “report” link, create one to five screen captures for upload in the coming step. In case the website, who published negative content about your brand or product, updated or removed the unpleasant content; you may want to submit another request to have the cache removed at Baidu user service center: The downside of this strategy is that it takes time for Baidu to process your request. One possible solution is, you try call the customer service and do your best to get it reviewed asap. If you don’t have such problems right now, you should get prepared making a standard response protocol as part of the risk management.

Also read: Why Wechat Marketing Metrics Could All Be Lies

Baidu Ice Bucket is a change to Baidu’s mobile search results ranking algorithm that is first released on 25 August 2014.

Baidu announced a new algorithm last week for Baidu mobile search results called Ice Bucket Algorithm, aiming to hit low quality sites and pages for mobile search.

Baidu Ice Bucket first update is launched today aiming for the following websites:

• Pages with forced pop-up windows and app download
• Pages that require user login before revealing content
• Pages with too many ads

Baidu’s official announcement emphasized on the type of sites that require users to download apps in order for access, which is bad for user experience; these type of sites will likely experience huge drop in search rankings on Baidu mobile search.

These days in China, some webmasters and entrepreneurs, developing mobile apps  and being good at SEO, optimize pages for Baidu mobile and force the users to download and install these apps before the proposed content is revealed. Obviously this is bad for user experience and sites using this tactic should update their sites with more readable content and adopt an indirect way to promote their apps.

It’s time to re-evaluate your Baidu SEO strategy.

While ostensibly there to help visitors navigate the web, the evolution of the Chinese Internet has turned this otherwise benign footer element into a commodity bought and sold by savvy web entrepreneurs and shifty SEO consultants for their own gain and to the detriment of the Chinese Internet as a whole.

While it’s easy to blame shortcomings in the algorithms, a more well-rounded explanation for their persistence is a fundamental attribution error by search engines toward an individual expression that doesn’t deliver the same utility when applied to China.

Search engines are prone to see “friendly links” as paid links, fraudulent votes in an otherwise natural election of how people link to each other on the web.

Scores of PhDs and very bright engineers work tirelessly to recognize and rid their indexes of this scourge of paid links – otherwise, searchers wouldn’t know who to trust, who to listen to, and have a sickening feeling that all the blue links being waved in their face are being manipulated.

The quality and impartiality of search results are of utmost importance lest searchers switch engines. “The goal is always the same: improve the user experience,” says Udi Manber, VP of engineering at Google in charge of Search Quality. “This is not the main goal, it is the only goal.”

Search engine algorithms, with slight differences, are based on the notion that the quality and quantity of links, in combination with lesser signals, determine if and when a site should rank for a given search query. Although the easiest way to get links is simply to buy them, this is universally against search engine guidelines and those caught buying or selling links risk a penalty.

Search engines operating in China must overcome yet another obstacle: the impact of collectivist culture. Baidu and Google both got their start in America, an individualistic culture, indexing and ranking web pages written by and with links to and from Americans – Baidu in New Jersey at IDD Information Services and Google for a Ph.D. thesis at Stanford.

The essence behind their algorithms is that the importance of a web page can be determined by counting its number of citations, or backlinks. In other words, the more people talk about a web page, the more useful it must be for whatever anchor text they used in their link.

The Chinese, however, express opinions and transmit word-of-mouth differently than Americans, whose link graph and algorithms Baidu and Google are both based on. Despite Baidu’s dominant market share and Google’s valiant effort, neither search engine in China has overcome the deficiencies in their algorithm to make sense of the link graph in a collectivist culture.

Motivational factors and social benefits play an important role in self-expression online and the likelihood to link. In individualistic cultures like the US, writing about something online is often a means of gaining attention and showing connoisseurship.

Americans talk about something to reinforce their self-concept. On the contrary, members of collectivist cultures like China are under the high pressure of the group and are less likely to write about something online to gain attention and praise, even about something they generally like and are knowledgeable about.

For stuff they don’t like, there’s risk of shame in bringing it up and little social benefit for breaking the social hierarchy just to express your subjectivity. Compare the case of Mr. Chow of New York v. Ste. Jour Azur S.A. in America to that of this food blogger in Taiwan.

In the former, the court said “Mr. Chow could prove that the reviewer’s personal tastes are bizarre and his opinions unreasonable, but that does not destroy their entitlement to constitutional protection”, while the latter ended in detention, fines, and a stern warning to other opinionated bloggers.

Furthermore, members of collectivist cultures are more likely to attribute positive and negative outcomes equally to themselves rather than a service provider.

There’s subsequently less impulse to post something online about an experience since there are no strong feelings toward the service provider either way (as they’re in the same collective).

The graph below is from a Kansas State University study showing how Koreans, who are also collectivist, and Americans, individualists, reacted to getting a great deal vs. being overcharged for airline tickets.

Koreans are more likely to feel “meh” toward an experience so aren’t likely to recount it publicly online.

Citations then are not the best way for search engines to look at the relative importance of web pages in collectivist cultures. The differences in the American and Chinese link graphs can best be witnessed through the linking patterns surrounding the topic of wine.

Knowledge of a bottle of wine can tell others that you are a person of sophistication and good taste, or that you are pretentious and waste your energy discussing a drink – that is, wine often elicits strong responses.

The top websites in the US and China for wine-related keywords, winelibrary.com and yesmywine.com respectively, demonstrate the effects of collectivist culture on the Chinese link graph and the consequences for the individualistic-biased search engines.

Links to winelibrary.com come from social media, blogs, and news websites, while yesmywine.com gets its links rather furtively from directories and “friendly links” in footers.

While both websites have enough high-authority links to boost them near the top for wine-related search queries in their respective countries, getting there took them down completely different paths.

Search engine algorithms work best for people like Gary Vaynerchuk, the man behind winelibrary.com, who exudes a charismatic outgoing personality and finds himself popular with lots of people linking to his site.

American society highly values those who are loud, fast, and active in most settings, and search engines – invented in America – reflect that. Chinese SEOs and website owners find they must re-arrange their world to put themselves in front of you.

Attaining top rankings can be seen as a race to get the most people riled up about your site from other sites, so to overcome the problem of Chinese netizens not expressing themselves online and linking like those in the West, link building in China through directories, paid links, and other low key methods of obtainment will persist.

Website owners with the deepest pockets for paid links consequently have the greatest odds of top rankings. With the current bias of the algorithms and rampant manipulation, it’s impossible to know if the search results returned to you are really the most relevant pages.

Burberry launched its first luxury social retail store, empowered by WeChat

This is a guest post by Doug Pierce, the Co-Founder and Head of Research at Digital Due Diligence, a boutique Internet equity analysis firm.