Baidu Recommendation Engine R&D Team Grows to 100
TechWeb, 6/19/12
Liao Ruoxue, chief architect of Chinese internet company Baidu (Nasdaq: BIDU), has revealed that that the company's recommendation engine team, established last year, has grown to over 100 people.
Liao said that internet users' information search habits are changing; as the number of webpages reaches into the hundreds of trillions, the number of search results returned for a given query has grown too large, forcing users to spend significant time sifting through results for the best one, which in turn is driving the development of recommendation engines.
Baidu's recommendation engine has three key characteristics, according to Liao: first, it will cover multiple languages, media, and the company's entire product range. While Amazon offers product recommendations and Pandora offers music recommendations, Baidu will provide cross-platform recommendations; second, Baidu will focus on creating core recommendation algorithms that can be applied to all of Baidu's products, platforms, and services; and third, Baidu will develop intelligent recommendation services to meet user needs.
Baidu began R&D on its recommendation engine in 2011 with its online music search services, later expanding it to its homepage and Baidu Knows.
In the case of Baidu Knows, whereas users previously needed an average of 12 hours to receive a reply to their query, with the recommendation engine technology the time has been reduced to less than 5 minutes and the reply rate has been raised to 50%.
"When users conduct a search with their mobile device and securely provide their location, we can become aware of their information needs and deliver relevant content quickly," said Liao.
Baidu's recommendation engine is currently a fundamental service built into Baidu's search engine, and is not yet a standalone product. "If the traditional search engine is no longer suitable for this service, we may use it as the basis of a new product," siad Liao.
Liao added that even if the recommendation engine develops into a mature service, it would not eliminate the need for Baidu's open platform or partnerships with vertical websites such as B2C e-commerce site 360Buy.
Editor's Note: For more information on this topic, please see "Sogou Browser to Integrate Recommendation Engine," MD 11/21/11 issue.
Keywords: Internet Baidu BIDU online search
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