What Do the Changes to Baidu Paid Search Mean for Marketers?
China's Internet search engine, Baidu, has introduced two key changes offering better search services for advertisers.
In recent years, “search” in the U.S. has not been moving as fast in the development of new technologies or new channels in the same way that social media and mobile have. And the same can be assumed in markets such as China. But Baidu, China’s major local search engine, recently introduced some major changes to its site offering new options for advertisers.
These two significant changes are:
- Search Network with Display Select
- New keyword match type options for Chinese users’ search queries
New: Baidu Search Network With Display Select, Without Option to Opt Out
If you have a paid search spend with Baidu’s search network, you may have noticed a big increase in impressions in mid-October when Baidu rolled out the Search Network with Display Select to Baidu paid search accounts.
For now, this is how Baidu Search with Display Select works:
- When you have campaigns that are targeting the search network and search partners, your campaigns are automatically, by default, switched to also include Display Select.
- At the moment there is no option available in your Baidu paid search account to opt out of the Display Select traffic.
- You are, however, given an option to reduce the bid price of the Display Select clicks, as a percentage of the Search Network and Search Partners clicks. The minimum bid price is set at 70 percent of the bid price of Search Network and Search Partners.
- Note: Baidu’s search campaigns mean your ads can show up on www.Baidu.com and on Baidu’s search partners.
- In your Baidu paid search account’s report section, you are given an option to extract a report showing all traffic, search network and search partner traffic (this is prior to the change), and Display Select traffic (this is new).
- You will see that the majority of the additional impressions have come from Display Select. So after the day Display Select was introduced, your account’s click-through rate (CTR) would have dipped.
- We have seen cases in which prior to Display Select the account CTR was averaging 3 percent to 5 percent but after that, dropping to less than 1 percent. In comparison, if you review your many pure display campaigns, they mostly end up having a CTR less than 1 percent, or in some cases, even less than 0.5 percent.
Baidu’s Keyword Match Types
Baidu has a total of six keyword match types:
- Exact
- Phrase 1
- Phrase 2
- Phrase 3
- Broad
- Negative
Exact, broad, and negative matches are three conventional and easy to understand match types. The three phrase matches are the ones that require some explanations. They are named as Phrase 1, Phrase 2, and Phrase 3 for easy reference.
- All three phrases match types are still capable of matching users’ search queries no broader than broad match and no narrower than exact match.
- For now let’s assume A, B, C, D, X, Y are all Chinese characters.
- Phrase 1 is the traditional phrase match. For example, if the keyword is ABC, and Phrase 1 can match XYABC or ABCXY. However, it cannot match ABXYC.
- Phrase 2 can match whatever Phrase 1 can, and can match ABXYC and some other slight variations such as ABXYD, where D is synonymous to C. However, it cannot match BCXY.
- Phrase 3 can match whatever Phrase 2 can, and can also match BCXY and XBCY.
