What is Baidu Zhidao

Baidu Zhidao (百度知道) literally means Baidu Knows is a Chinese language collaborative Web-based collective intelligence by question and answer which is built and run by Baidu. Like Baidu itself, it relies on self-censorship in order to keep in line with government regulations. It uses user-generated content and is moderated by platform administrators. Any content related to pornography, commercial advertisements, or direct personal attacks are routinely removed.

The test version was launched on June 21, 2005, and turned into release version on November 8, 2005. In essence, Baidu Zhidao is a question-and-answer-based platform, similar to Quora or it’s ugly cousin – Yahoo answers.

A registered user asks a question in which other members are promoted to give answers using credits as a reward. In the meantime, these answers focus on the search result of the same or relevant questions. That is how knowledge is collected and shared.

Question and answer together with the search engine makes it possible for a member to be a producer and a consumer of knowledge, which is often referred to collective intelligence.

Unlike Baidu Baike, the entries in Baidu Zhidao can be manipulated much easier. Large number of entries are questions and answers often created by the same person using multiple accounts. The platform also often turns to a battleground between brands. It is often too easy to damage competitors’ reputation by posting negative content about their specific brand or product.

Baidu Zhidao Marketing Options

First step in marketing with Baidu Zhidao is to research what type questions, that are relevant to your company, have already been asked or answered on the platform. Then you should try to provide the most objective and informative answer with the goal to get upvoted and ranked higher.

Needless to say, it is never a good idea to disclose the fact that the answerer may be associated with that particular company. Obviously, answers from non-biased participants would enjoy greater degree of trust compared to “corporate” ones.

Just like with Baidu Baike, marketing with Baidu Zhidao can also involve Baidu display ads. While there is no guarantee that your ad will show up for relevant search terms, it is still important to update the setting in Baidu Tuiguang (Baidu Adwords) account and adjust the bidding to maximize those chances.

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In terms of monthly users, Weibo is the second largest Chinese social media platform after WeChat. However, unlike WeChat, it is still primarily PC based. Weibo is one of the most powerful marketing tools in China offering wide range of possibilities for reaching people across various demographics and psychographics.

Weibo offers to marketers a powerful Weibo Index tool to learn more about what platform users are searching for. Compared to previously covered Baidu and Qihoo tools, it is structured in sig
nificantly different way allowing generating other types of data.

It is important to note that social media platforms like Weibo could be quite similar to search engines in many ways. Platform users search for terms in a similar way as they do using Baidu or Qihoo. This allows Weibo to generate wealth of information that could be indispensable for marketers looking to customize their message for this particular audience.

Weibo Index into four main tabs: historic keyword trends, real time trends, geographical interpretation and user attributes analysis.

Let’s examine what Weibo Index shows for the same keyword we used for Baidu and Qihoo tools covered earlier.

The first graph shows search volumes for a keyword on PC and mobile. It is quite clear that there is a certain correlation with the search results we have seen with the search engines: both types of data show a sharp peak in the second half of March:

Looking at both PC based and mobile searches reveals the fact that most searches have been done from mobile Weibo app rather than PC based website:

Next tab displays search volumes in the past 24 hours. Here, peaks occur in different times compared to results from the search engines. Apparently, Weibo searches for iPhone 8 have peaked at around noon and then again at 23:00:

Such information can be particularly useful for social media marketing. It can allow marketers to figure out optimal timing for posts to receive maximum exposure on the network. In fact, the data can even be reduced down to an hour level in order to identify search volumes of every single minute within a particular hour!

The location tab shows geographic distribution of the searches:

Here the situation is also a bit different from the results we have seen with Baidu and Qihoo. It seems that people in Hebei and Zhejiang provinces were the ones most interested in iPhone 8.

Last tab, audience attributes, shows even less correlation with the search engines data for this particular term. This time, women represented the vast majority of the audience (80%) vs. only 20% of men. Also, the audience is significantly much younger on Weibo: most people searching for iPhone 8 were between ages 19-24.

This information could lead to a different approach for marketing this specific product. On Weibo, marketers could be tailoring the ad to a largely young female audience while Baidu and Qihoo ads should cater to older male crowd. Optimizing marketing approach across different platforms would be much more difficult without having such data.

Last section of the audience attributes tab relates to user persona that seems quite irrelevant for this particular keyword. Also, Weibo shows the data on zodiac signs of the users searching for a particular term:

Apparently, Libra born users were more active in their search for iPhone 8. Why was that the case? I guess we will never know.

In any case, Weibo seems to be the only network out there that enables marketers to incorporate astrology into their marketing…

Continue to WeChat Index tutorial >>>

Here are our tutorials on China keyword research tools:

Keyword research on Baidu: Baidu Index

Keyword research on Qihoo: Qihoo Index

Keyword research on Weibo: Weibo Index

Keyword research on WeChat: WeChat Index

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Qihoo, also known as 360Search and So.com, is the second largest Chinese search engine. By various estimates, it holds between 15 to 25% of the search market share and is fairly popular among younger users.

It is also often noted that Qihoo search results tend to be more accurate than Baidu’s and advertising with Qihoo is also a bit cheaper. Despite once posing a real threat to Baidu’s dominance, Qihoo is still trailing Baidu in terms of overall popularity.

Qihoo Index is the keyword research tool that can be used to complement Baidu’s. Also, it doesn’t require registering an account which makes it a bit easier. Other than that, the functionality and the type of data Qihoo Index generates is quite similar to Baidu Index which was covered earlier.

Here we are using the same keyword “iPhone8” to see the results. The first panel presents the total number of searches and the trends overtime. Just like with Baidu Index, the data can be displayed for the last 7, 30 or 90 days as well as for custom date ranges.

The top panel shows 5,340 searches for iPhone 8 over the last 30 days which is about 5 times less searches on Baidu for the same period.

Similar to Baidu, Qihoo index indicates various kinks, peaks and valleys of the curve with a letter corresponding to a specific media mention. Hovering over those letters opens a pop-up with more details on the source linked to an article:

Another Qihoo Index graph specifically focuses on media mentions. Just like with Baidu, each change in the curve can be further examined for more details related to a specific news source.

The graph above displays search activity in the last 24 hours. Quite predictably, the search reaches two of its peaks in the morning and afternoon with a dip in between (a lunch break?) before flattening out during the night hours.

Next diagram shows related keywords in key phrase surrounding the main keyword. Analogous to Baidu, the keywords are grouped based on search volumes and relevant position:

Related searches data displays the keywords searched by users before or after that specific search term. In this case, “iPhone 8 price” was the strongest related key phrase. Also, users seem to be often searching for iPhone 8 pictures:

Also like Baidu, Qihoo Index also shows geographic distribution of searches. It seems that most iPhone 8 related searches were coming from the richest Chinese provinces and cities which reflects traditional popularity of Apple products in those areas.

Insights into audience are largely similar to the results we have seen with Baidu for the same term: men represent the majority (70% vs. 30%). The age brackets used by Qihoo are a bit different with Baidu: almost half of the people interested in iPhone 8 were aged between 25 and 34.

Another dimension that is available only with Qihoo Index is classification of the users by attributes. Apparently, Qihoo uses other search terms attributed to the same user in order to build what is called “persona” in marketing. Learning more about customer profiles through this method can provide further useful insights for a marketer.

Continue to Weibo Index tutorial >>>

Here are our tutorials on China keyword research tools:

Keyword research on Baidu: Baidu Index

Keyword research on Qihoo: Qihoo Index

Keyword research on Weibo: Weibo Index

Keyword research on WeChat: WeChat Index

The post Basics of China Keyword Research: Qihoo Index first appeared on Sampi.co.

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Being the largest search engine in China, Baidu keyword research should be the one to start with. Currently, Baidu offers Baidu Index tool that is free for Baidu advertising accounts, offering some basic information to users.

Here is an example of searching for keyword “iPhone8” (most Chinese users would typically type in “iPhone8” without space between the two words).

First, Baidu Index would match it with a keyword in the database before displaying the data. This means that for some rare keywords or those with low search volumes, this tool may not show any results. For those cases, a more powerful keyword research tool within Baidu advertising account must be used.

The top section shows the numbers for search volumes on PC (25,999) and mobile (20,070). It is remarkable to note that the overall search volume for this particular term is only 20% larger on PC vs. mobile.

Some points on the graph are also marked with letters: A, B, C, D etc. Those can be linked to a particular events such as mentions in media. Viewing the relevant content can give a researcher further insight on what was behind peaks and valleys of the chart.

Next, Baidu Index shows some more data on related keywords and how they are related to the original one in a key phrase (sometimes called long tail keyword). The size of the bubble illustrates the search volume and the color – the relative position.

Manipulating the slider allows viewing snapshots of the related keywords at different time periods. It can also help getting an idea on how the searches were changing over time.

The data is further detailed in the list of top related keywords that come before or after this specific keyword. This panel also lists the sites that have received most hits as a result of this keyword search:

Unsurprisingly, the most common key phrase was about the timing of iPhone 8 release.

Next graph specifically focuses on media mentions of the keyword. From here, user can view the actual article. This helps figuring out which type of news helped driving more searches and which had little to no effect.

The following series of data focuses on the audience. The map below illustrates search volume distribution by province. From here, the data can be further drilled down to the levels of area and city.

Finally, the audience is broken down by age distribution and gender. According to Baidu, iPhone 8 was mostly searched by males between ages of 20 and 39.

Continue to Qihoo Index tutorial >>>

Here are our tutorials on China keyword research tools:

Keyword research on Baidu: Baidu Index

Keyword research on Qihoo: Qihoo Index

Keyword research on Weibo: Weibo Index

Keyword research on WeChat: WeChat Index

The post Basics of China Keyword Research: Baidu Index first appeared on Sampi.co.

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All of the major Chinese search engines, as well social media platforms, offer some type of basic tools for China keyword research and trends measurement. The latest launch of WeChat Index feature holds a lot of promise. With nearly 890 million monthly active users, it has the potential to offer the most accurate picture of online searches. Unfortunately, it is still severely limited compared to the tools from Baidu, Qihoo and Weibo.

Another missing component in the overall China digital landscape is the absence of shopping trends measuring tool from Taobao, the largest ecommerce platform in China. After launching the beta of Taobao Index at the end of 2011, it was discontinued last year. Alibaba promises to relaunch a better tool in the future but it has already been a year since the original Taobao index went offline.

The first tool we are going to look at is Baidu Index.

Continue to Baidu Index tutorial >>>

Here are our tutorials on China keyword research tools:

Keyword research on Baidu: Baidu Index

Keyword research on Qihoo: Qihoo Index

Keyword research on Weibo: Weibo Index

Keyword research on WeChat: WeChat Index

The post Basics of China Keyword Research: Measuring Search Trends first appeared on Sampi.co.

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As China’s largest search engine, Baidu handles approximately 3.3 billion queries per day. In comparison, Google is only slightly ahead with 3.5 billion queries per day globally. Unlike Google, vast majority of Baidu searches come from China.

While Google’s top search results often feature links to Wikipedia, the top results of Baidu searches are very likely to show links to Chinese equivalents of Wikipedia – Baidu Baike along with another high authority site, Baidu Zhidao. Both of them also happen to be Baidu properties.

Considering how the search results on Baidu are structured, it becomes important for brands to have content published on those platforms. If relevant, such content has a good chance of getting some exposure in Baidu top search results.

Let’s have a closer look on those platforms and marketing opportunities with Baidu Baike.

What is Baidu Baike

Baidu Baike (百度百科), which literally means “Baidu Encyclopedia” is a Chinese language, collaboratively-built, web-based encyclopedia that is owned and produced by the Chinese search engine Baidu. The test version was released on April 20, 2006 and within three weeks the encyclopedia had grown to more than 90,000 articles and surpassed the number in Chinese Wikipedia. From January 2018 Baidu Baike has more than 15.1 million articles.

Baidu Baike also contains food recipes, film products, internet programs and video games, as well as their encyclopedic content. However, unlike Chinese Wikipedia, Baidu Baike never gives a strict definition of the difference between an encyclopedia entry and a dictionary entry, which is why there are many explanations about diction and common phrases.

When it comes to locally registered companies, a lot of information is generated by Baidu automatically. There are some data that can be updated manually but the company must first claim the ownership of that page in order to edit it. All updates are subject to approval by platform’s administrators.

All editors need to register an account before editing, and administrators filter all but the simplest edits before they go public. A phone number registered in mainland China is needed to register a new account.

Baidu Baike Marketing Options

There are two main routes for marketing with Baidu Baike. First, the company should claim their page to get editor access to it. This will offer an opportunity to make such page more informative. However, the editor must first register with the real name and local phone number and provide company’s authorization to the platform.

The second method of Baidu Baike marketing involves using Baidu display advertising to increase chances that the company ad would be shown with the relevant search entry. This route requires a company to register Baidu advertiser’s account.

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Here is our guide Baidu Baike.

Baidu Baike (百度 百科 in Chinese, translated as “Baidu Encyclopedia”) is a collaborative, web-based encyclopedia that is owned and produced by the Chinese search engine Baidu. The test version was released on April 20, 2006 and within three weeks the encyclopedia had grown to more than 90,000 articles and surpassing Chinese Wikipedia. In January 2018 Baidu Baike had more than 15.1 million articles.

Baidu officially declares that Baidu Baike serves as an online encyclopedia, as well as information storage for netizens. Baidu Baike claims “equality”, “cooperation”, “sharing” and “freedom” as the platform’s core values. It is connected with search engines in order to meet information needs of the users.

Baidu Baike Concept

At World Wide Web Consortium 2018, Baidu’s William Chang said that “there is actually no reason for China to use Wikipedia … It is very natural for China to make its own products.”

While using Baidu search engine, the link of the corresponding entry in Baidu Baike, if present, is placed as the first result or one of the first results.

Content restrictions

Articles or comments that contain the following types of content are not allowed:

• Pornographic, violent and “uncivilized” content
• Advertisement
• Personal attacks
• Content against morality and ethics
• Malicious, trivial or spam-like content
• Personal facts

Since Baidu falls under the jurisdiction of the Chinese government, it is mandatory to censor the contents of their encyclopedia in accordance with relevant government regulations. All editors must register accounts with their real names before they can create or edit articles. The administrators filter the edits before they become public.

As a result, Baidu Baike has an advantage over its competitors by complying with Chinese censorship laws. Since Chinese version of Wikipedia does not censor its own content, the government can block it while Baidu Baike remains accessible.

Structure: front page

The current front page of Baidu Baike was put into operation in 6 September 2012. At the top of the page displays the official Baidu Baike slogan “Let all humankind learn about the world”, as well as up-to-date information about the number of users and mentions. The selected content is presented at the bottom left of the front page.

The bottom right contains announcements, plans and projects. The information on the front page usually contains current hot topics, often related to featured news. In addition to these popular topics, there are also one-sentence summaries of the news. Baidu Baike also includes other channels such as nature, culture, geography and special topics such as core users, digital museums, etc.

Submissions

The access pages of Baidu Baike include telephone cards, texts and other supporting information. An earlier version allowed users to respond to pages, but this feature was removed after September 2008, coinciding with time when other major Western social media channels (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube) became inaccessible in China. The main language of Baidu Baike is Chinese, written with the simplified script, messages written in traditional Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese or Japanese are automatically translated.

Calling cards and texts

Baike telephone cards contain two parts: the description of an item and the basic information. The first is similar to the preface of an article, which provides a general introduction to the whole text. The latter uses a table to summarize basic information and statistics. Both are processed separately from the main part of the article. The main text is limited to 40 thousand bits, which corresponds to 20 thousand Chinese characters.

The earlier versions could only contain one image, but now 20 images and 20 albums can be included in an article. The item may also contain a link to a Baidu card, dynamic screenshots and videos. The information cited is below the main text, which does not distinguish footnotes from other details. However, the quoted images do not specify the source.

Supporting information

Most pieces of supporting information are located at the bottom or the right of the page, except for scientific terms, which are pushed upwards. Usually supporting information is automatically generated by the system, with some manual editing. Supporting information on the right side of the page contains personal information, statistics, today in history, honor contribution and current trends. Statistics include the number of page views, the number of editors, the latest updates, information about makers, etc. Editors who contribute complex articles are also mentioned and honored.

A user can see a database, the Baidu dictionary and related items at the bottom of each article. The celebrity articles have added databases with their individual songs, albums and videos. The user recommendations section is used to collect feedback about the article.

Editing Encyclopedia entries

When an editor makes an edit that has been approved, the editor’s account receives a certain number of experience points based on the complexity of the operation (1 for the simplest operations, 5 for a complex operation). When an editor successfully completes the requested job, the editor receives experience points and a predetermined number of welfare points that can be used to make purchases on Baidu. Editors are divided into 15 levels with corresponding ‘Encyclopedia titles’ (百科 头衔) based on their accumulated experience points. In 2012, the names of the titles were changed from modern business-sounding titles to titles that resembled the Chinese imperial exam and the Confucian scholarship.

Content and categories

In contrast with a traditional encyclopedia, the information in Baidu Baike is somewhat broader. Baidu Baike also contains food recipes, film products, internet programs and video games, as well as their encyclopedic content. However, unlike Chinese Wikipedia, Baidu Baike never gives a strict definition of the difference between an encyclopedia entry and a dictionary entry. There are also many statements about diction and common phrases.

In addition to articles, Baidu Baike contains several special pages:

• A Sandbox entry (编辑 实验), giving users the opportunity to practice editing;
• Help, which offers terminologies, basic settings, prescriptions, user titles, etc.
• User page, called “Baidu Authorized ID” which is similar to that of Wikipedia. However, these are considered an encouragement for advanced users – very few editors receive the privilege to create their own page;
• Baidu Baike has an open policy for adding entries and supports categorized search functions. The classification is based on the characteristics of an item, but not on the quality, and there is no limit to categorization. Baidu Baike now has an elementary categorized page and tree. Part of the open layout can be set at levels, but catalogs with similar meanings cannot be merged or redirected.

Source: Wikipedia

Read more on how you can take advantage of marketing on Baidu Baike.

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Moreover, Baidu is also the leading choice for searches on mobile devices, the increasingly important Chinese search engines market. In June 2016, it was reported that Baidu had 667 million monthly active users (MAU) just for that month alone.

Baidu is still the leader of Chinese search engines market

The entire Chinese search engines market has been growing at fairly steady rate since 2010, adding each year somewhere between 50 and 70 million new users. This year, it is estimated to have reached about 600 million regular users, about 3 quarters of which go to Baidu as their service of choice.

In many ways, Baidu has been following, if not copying, Google’s business strategy. It has diversified its business into areas that are identical to Google’s: from navigation and self-driving cars to AI (artificial intelligence) and VR (virtual reality).

Although, it did hit a few bumps on the road, such as recent scandals with its medical ads and illegal promotions of gambling sites, it is hard to imagine Baidu being knocked off its primary position among Chinese search engines any time soon.

The other Chinese search engines that are worth mentioning are Qihoo (aka Search360) and Sogou. Qihoo in particular has been growing relatively fast in recent years and was the only one that was ever in a position to somewhat threaten Baidu’s dominance in Chinese search engines market, although it is no longer the case.

When it comes to advertising, Baidu should always be considered as the first choice, mainly because of its largest reach. On average, Baidu CPC (cost per click) tends to be higher than Google across almost all industries. Most likely, it will continue to increase as Baidu has been experiencing fall in profits and will probably increase prices as time goes by.

Another reason to focus on Baidu is the fact that its technology is the most advanced. This ultimately affects advertisement CTR (click through rate) through higher relevancy with the search terms.

Baidu has also been active in the video market and currently owns one of the largest online video hosting platforms called iQiYi. As videos are quickly becoming one of the most popular types of content consumed online, Baidu is in a good position to take advantage of that market as well.

In addition, Baidu, like Google, is very good at remarketing which is built into its display network with over 600,000 partner websites in China. Managing both search ads and display ads is done within the same Baidu advertising account where user can simply split the budget between the two channels.

One of the biggest hustles associated with Baidu PPC is opening the advertising account. Unless your company has Chinese business registration, applying for Baidu account involves quite a bit of paperwork and a long verification process. Baidu would typically request translated version of your foreign business license and may require additional proof of incorporation. Companies in financial and medical fields would most certainly be scrutinized more carefully and multiple requests for additional licenses are quite common.

Verification of a website (which must be in Chinese) often leads to more requests to change certain sections (most commonly “about us” part). All this is aimed at making sure that the advertiser is not misrepresenting its business nature and is a legitimate company which will not become involved in promoting anything illegal.

This process is in sharp contrast with Google’s where anyone with a Gmail and a credit card can open an account and start running campaigns almost immediately.

The situation is not that much different with the other Chinese search engines such as Qihoo and Sogou. They also require business registration and licenses from foreign applicants and must follow similar verification process. Once approved, running PPC campaign with those engines is quite similar to Baidu. On the positive side, for businesses that are not in very competitive niches, CPC on Qihoo and Sogou can be substantially lower compared to Baidu. Therefore, it is a good idea to try those engines as well in parallel, although not instead of, Baidu.

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In our earlier article, we have introduced six most innovative services that have developed around various concepts of Chinese sharing economy. Some of those companies, like DiDi, have grown enormous within record time, swallowing rivals and winning new markets. Others have  recently achieved infamous “unicorn” status (Tujia, Huochebang) while more startups are still small but full of potential.

5 distinctive features of Chinese sharing economy

#1: Smartphone proliferation

Perhaps the strongest driver behind wide adoption of shared services in new Chinese sharing economy is proliferation of smartphones, particularly in the cities.

Virtually every shared service “lives” on a smartphone is some shape or form. A smartphone enables users connecting with location based services while its camera serves as a scanning device which is essential for many such apps.

Moreover, many apps are either completely integrated with popular apps like WeChat or Alipay or are dependent on them for payment and authentication.

#2: Popularity of QR codes

While QR codes are much less common elsewhere, in China they are unambiguous and can be found practically everywhere. Moreover, virtually everyone knows what they are and what to do with them. In fact, WeChat, is single-handedly responsible for popularizing QR codes in China.

Alternative technologies like NFC have never achieved the same degree of recognition and popularity, mainly due to cost. Since printing QR code or generating it online is either extremely cheap or practically free, as long as security is not a concern, they always win over NFC or other technologies.

Many of the services of Chinese shared economy we discussed earlier rely on QR codes to connect users with a particular product such as in the case of unlocking shared bikes or shared umbrella locks.

#3: Convenient payment systems

Most of the shared services rely on a payment system for both payment and placing deposits. Two of the most common payment systems in China, Alipay and WeChat Pay, facilitate the process in the easiest and most secure way.

Since almost every Chinese city dweller is already a user of at least one or, more often, both of those systems, integrating them into the shared service apps is a natural fit. Essentially, those payment platforms have become the primary enablers of Chinese sharing economy.

Moreover, unlike Western equivalent PayPal (which is practically unheard of in China), both Alipay and WeChat Pay are transaction free services – they don’t charge users a single penny for payments as long as they are below a certain limit and are processed within China.

#4: Real name registration

The common misconception about sharing economy is that it is largely based on trust. If that was true – the concept would be a no starter in China. Luckily, with Chinese sharing economy trust is not an issue, or at least not to the same degree as it could be otherwise.

Why is that the case? The reason is that as long as people use one of the payment systems (Alipay or WeChat Pay) for transactions, they are automatically identified by their real name. In fact, WeChat and Alipay require real name registration that is connected to users’ Chinese ID or a passport for foreigners.

This arrangement minimized chances of service abuse (although it does happen, especially with bike sharing apps) or, at least, makes it easier to identify, track and punish bad behavior.

#5: Backing of internet giants

While being on good terms with the government officials is a pre-requisite for doing business in China in general, having the back of one of the BATs (Baidu-Alibaba-Tencent triumvirate) is a guarantee of success inChinese sharing economy.

Apparently, those internet giants are seeing great potential in many of shared services startups and have been generously financing them. In a rare display of cooperation within BAT, some of the services have been backed by more than one of them. Tencent and Baidu have been particularly enthusiastic in financing many such startups propelling some of them to unicorn status all within a couple of years.

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Being a worldwide industry problem, China’s digital advertising market seems to be one of the worst affected ones. Chinese  internet is the second most popular advertising media after television and was estimated at $55.48 billion by the end of 2018 according to China Daily. Unfortunately, advertisers’ losses could account for up to third of that amount, mostly lost to non-human traffic and fraudulent CTR (click through rate).

The report by Miaozhen Systems, released about a year ago, claims that auto and telecommunications were hit the worst with up to a third of the traffic being non-human, i.e. generated by bots and crawlers, while food & drink and the fast moving consumer products industry saw the lowest rate at 8.52% and 11.88% respectively.

…many local computers still run on Windows XP that is no longer supported by Microsoft. Bots can infect such machines much easier and, in fact, a proportionally larger share of fraudulent traffic seems to be coming from lower tier cities where more people still use older Windows OS.

How do the losses occur exactly? A small piece of malicious software, a “bot”, is placed on a host computer from which it visits various sites in the background without user noticing anything abnormal with their machine. It’s even harder to spot for advertisers because it shares the real user’s unique “cookie” identifier.

Other pieces of software can stack hundreds of ads on top of each other on a website, or place the entire website into a small pixel on a page. This way, it would seem that a particular ad was displayed while, in fact, it was never seen by a visitor.

CPC (cost per click) ads are also affected as such bots can be smart enough to mix real clicks with the “fake” ones, making it harder to identify as a non-human activity.

There are number of reasons why China is one of the worst affected markets. First, many local computers still run on Windows XP that is no longer supported by Microsoft. Bots can infect such machines much easier and, in fact, a proportionally larger share of fraudulent traffic seems to be coming from lower tier cities where more people still use older Windows OS.

Second, not all the fake traffic is caused by bots, some is accounted for search engine crawlers. Since search engine market in China is much more fragmented than in the West, there are simply more crawlers visiting each site.

A third reason that is also specific to China is the fact that many people would willingly install special traffic software on their systems in order to attract more followers to their social media profiles, making their social activity appear more popular. However, such programs would do many other things without user’s knowledge or consent, effectively plugging such computer into a larger bot network.

Lastly, there is a lack of habit and willingness to go after the offenders and many in the industry still consider this problem to be the necessary evil that nothing much can be done about. Although, there is a technology in place to combat the problem, its adoption in China has been slow.

A new alarming trend is the increasing proliferation of online fraud in the growing mobile space. Android is by far the most popular mobile OS in China but the official Google Play store is not the usual place to go for apps. Most people would go to many smaller apps market which exercise very little control over quality.

While, at the moment, most non-human traffic in China is still PC based, it is reasonable to assume that with more people using Android devices to access internet, the worst of mobile advertising fraud is yet to come.

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