China’s leading search engine Baidu is leapfrogging from Google and Bing by adding more semantics into their box search, making it much smarter, explains their spokesperson Kaiser Kuo to Penn-Olson. “Getting relevant results is even more important for mobile.”
Q&A at the website of Penn-Olson:
Their PR man Kaiser Kuo says, “60% of queries on Baidu include results from the box platform”…
I put it to Kaiser Kuo that it might be seen as unfair when a Baidu-related product fills a users’ entire screen after their search result; he countered, “The search results are still done algorithmically, so the most relevant still comes up first. The box platform is an open platform, to showcase your data, and it has a large ecosystem of developers.”
Indeed, a search for Douban.fm, a popular music-steaming site, brings up a music player at the top of the search results (pictured, top), allowing you to jump into Douban’s music live-stream with just one click. Also a search for the very vague term “online music” results in an online player that belongs to the relatively small music site YiShouGe.com.
For China’s developers, the process is similar to most app stores: create your frame that ties into Baidu’s box platform, and then submit it to Baidu. Plus, says Kuo, “Baidu has its own developer fund,” to encourage smaller devs to get on board as well…
Where is Baidu heading with its smart results? “It dovetails with mobile,” explains Kaiser Kuo, “because on mobile it’s even more important to get relevant results, on a limited sized screen. Also, we see a future of quick to power-on mobile devices, where these semantic terms could be spoken, or of course typed, and it’ll understand semantically what you ask.”
More at the weblog of Penn-Olson.
Kaiser Kuo is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need him at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch.
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