23/01/2008, Baidu(Baidu.jp) held a press conference in Tokyo, Japan.
Baidu Japan explained their targeted achievement and a strategy plan in Japan.

Masuda Vice President in Japan said:
“Currently, Japanese search engine industry is significantly shared by main two biggest SEs: Yahoo! Japan and Google Japan. And then, approximately 70% users (From Baidu research) are using multiple search engines and 80% people are replied that they are content. However, this research result also mentioned if any other better quality query search service, they would change. We highlighted this point and we are now targeting to get the second position in this market. We more focus on improving search quality technique and it can be amiable to be used as ‘Playing/ search engine’.
We are been quite confident by experience in China to give more advantage and service for users who use double byte character such as Kanji than non-double byte based search engines"

However, according to our search test bellow, the result shows an interesting outcome.
Both Japanese and Chinese use double byte fonts but except foreign alphabet, Chinese language uses the only one character however Japanese language uses mixed phrase with three different characters called “Kanji (Chinese or Japanese character)”, “Hiragana” and “Katakana”.

So far, in terms of Japanese language, totally Yahoo! Japan shows the highest number of search result. Although one of results illustrated Baidu has the highest volume of result by phrase match, it is likely less precise than other SEs.

Searched by only “Kanji (Chinese or Japanese character)”, Baidu sometimes had better result but once searched by mixed phase with original Japanese characters resulted lower figure yet the Baidu search result included only Japanese.

It is very interesting how they are going to improve this point: language character search technique. Beside PPC ad service is not available at the moment.


-Searched result- (Broad match type)
Translation in English - Cheep flight ticket abroad
Broad : 格安航空券 海外
Baidu: 3,450,000
Google: 395,000
Yahoo! Japan: 22,600,000

Translation in English - Cheep flight Ticket abroad Ticket (Including Katakana)
Broad match: 格安航空券 海外 チケット
Baidu: 207,000
Google: 286,000
Yahoo! Japan: 4,750,000

Translation in English - PPC advert
Broad match: PPC 広告
Baidu: 77,400
Google: 427,000
Yahoo! Japan: 1,520,000

Translation in English - PPC advert what is (Including Alpabet and Hiragana)
Broad match: PPC 広告とは
Baidu: 1,270
Google: 3,580
Yahoo! Japan: 2,120,000

Translation in English - China Travel Flight ticket
Broad match: 中国 旅行 航空券
Baidu: 373,000
Google: 324,000
Yahoo! Japan: 9,640,000

Translation in English - China Travel Flight ticket Buying (Including Hiragana)
Broad match: 中国 旅行 航空券 買う
Baidu: 13,100
Google: 64,000
Yahoo! Japan: 930,000

-Searched result- (Phrase match type)
Translation in English - China Travel Flight ticket
Phrase match: "中国 旅行 航空券"
Baidu: 197,000
Google: 2,460
Yahoo! Japan: 968