Baidu Local Search Sucks, Ex-Employee Sees It

Written by Luyi Chen on July 5, 2007
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AibangLocal search is the next hot battle ground of search engine. It’s basically a dynamic online yellow page of all kinds of business. People using local search are with more clear goal in mind. So it more likely results into a real purchase. Everyone sees the opportunity here. How are the players doing now?

Google local search is merged with map search. When you type location plus business category as the keyword in search box, you will get a list of relevant candidates in the left sidebar and a digital map on the right side with several balloons indicating each store’s location. In its US version, you can click and call the store directly. While in its Chinese version, there’s a feature to send the result to your cell phone. Google local search provides detailed information, pictures, and relevant pages about each store.

Baidu local search is similar to Google. It’s also merged with map search, but with less information and less feature. Baidu also has a yellow page search. But there’s more ads than content. Yahoo local search goes a different approach. It’s quite different from its US version. In China, it takes a model like Dianping (profile). The main part of the service is driven by community review.

Among the three, Baidu’s local search seems to be the weakest. There’s a new local search engine Aibang launched in Beijing by Zhou Limin, former chief architect of Baidu. Liu Jianguo, former CTO of Baidu is said to be an advisor of the startup. Both of them left Baidu by the end of last year. QQ has the story.

Aibang takes an approach similar to Yahoo. User review is the main part the service. It puts more emphasis on user interaction. Every user has a profile with his review history. Users can rate reviews by other people, submit new stores or update existing information.

Aibang places user on a more important role in the system. It intends to build a platform for people to help each other. Currently the product is in pre-marketing stage. You won’t feel many users in the system. This also shows there’s no guarantee that users will adopt this model.

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3 Responses to “Baidu Local Search Sucks, Ex-Employee Sees It”

  1. negativ on July 5th, 2007 11:05 pm

    aibang javascript sucks. in firefox 2, i get 2000+ javascript errors.

  2. Steve on July 6th, 2007 9:47 am

    The developers probably don’t even have FF installed. Firefox usage in China is well under 1%.

  3. negativ on July 7th, 2007 12:46 am

    that’s nice. funny how the largest user base of ms-based products don’t even pay for it.

    hurr…

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