Baidu Denies 40% of Traffic from Music Search
Sina Tech, 9/18/09
CEO Robin Li of Chinese internet search company Baidu (Nasdaq: BIDU) has denied reports that Baidu received 30% to 40% of its search traffic from searches for pirated music. Li said that music searches accounted for "an extremely small" proportion of overall search traffic, and that although Baidu would not release specific figures, more than 95% of its operating revenues come from web searches.
Mr. Li also said that over the past ten years, 76% of all of China's search traffic came through Baidu. Since moving into the Japanese search market two years ago, Baidu has rolled out web, image, video, and blog search tools in Japan as well. Li said that in the long term, Baidu plans to move into additional markets.
Editor's Note: Baidu's MP3 search page features relatively little advertising, with its Targisement product (a cost-per-click banner ad, display of which is not related to the query term, for which the advertiser pays approximately RMB 3 per click) accounting for the bulk of the available ad space. The value of the its MP3 search channel is much less in the amount of direct ad revenue it generates and much more in the amount of traffic it draws to the site (i.e. it is a landing point from which users may click through to other parts of the site) and the degree of stickiness it fosters among the site's users.
Keywords: online music Internet traffic Robin Li Internet Japan Baidu BIDU piracy revenue online search
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