Baidu's Click Fraud Charges
Advertising on Baidu.com can be a great way to reach Chinese consumers, but advertisers may find that their ads don't necessarily produce the desired results.
Nearly half of companies that advertise on Baidu are discouraged by what they perceive as a high percentage of invalid clicks, including fraudulent clicks, according to a report by Peter Lu, a longtime observer of China's Internet search market and managing director of China IntelliConsulting.
Baidu mixes paid listings and search results, so some users inadvertently click on ads, Lu says. He cites several causes for allegations of click fraud, including inflated click rates by sales agencies and distributors, fraudulent clicks by paid users, fraudulent clicks by competitors, and little overall pressure to stop corrupt practices.
In a recent IntelliConsulting survey, just 25 percent of Baidu's advertisers said they felt that the invalid click rate was within acceptable limits, and 43 percent said the problem was big enough to discourage them from advertising. In fact, 46 percent of the complaining companies said they believed that the invalid click rate was higher than 50 percent.
About 15 percent of Baidu's ad customers said they plan to decrease or cease placing ads during the next six months, the report said, but 20 percent plan to increase their placements during the same period.
The controversy over alleged click fraud on Baidu could spell long-term trouble for the company. Already, some advertisers see Google as a better way to reach a targeted audience.
"Google advertisements have a relatively higher return on investment, but because the traffic with Google is relatively small, the number of users attracted to your Web site is limited," says Lu.
He recommends that companies interested in advertising on a Chinese search engine play the field and compare results from ads placed on Baidu, Google and Yahoo China to find what works best for them.
Getting Baidu'd
Despite continuing allegations of click fraud, for companies that want to establish a presence in China, ads are still the main means of driving traffic to their sites from Baidu. But there are ways to optimize your site for the search engine so that your company has a fighting chance to come up high in a Baidu search:
- Render all content in simplified Chinese.
- Eliminate references to content that might be offensive to the Chinese government.
- Eliminate use of keywords that might be sensitive or banned by the Chinese government. (There's no official list, so users have to feel their way here.)
- Pay attention to keyword density and metadata, as in other search engines.
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