April 17, 2003

Sina.com, one of the mainland's most popular Web sites, has joined about 200 Internet portals in a government-backed search engine alliance that challenges global giants such as Google.

The search engine--developed by the China Internet Information Centre and Chinese firm Sinobet in September last year--links to a database of more than 30,000 mainland portals, including most of China's key official news Web sites.

Analysts said demand for reliable search engines had soared in the mainland, especially as the authorities frequently blocked access to popular foreign sites such as Google and AltaVista. "Last year, when the Google's mainland access stopped working, that caused a major outcry from many Chinese users," said Gartner's Asia-Pacific research director, Dion Wiggins.

"They could do nothing about it. Google is a foreign company in a foreign country. This search engine is in China, managed by Chinese. There is more local control."

The mainland search engine, chinasearch.com.cn, is free for Internet surfers, but firms need to pay to be linked to the database. "There isn't much difference if you are an ordinary user," Sina Vice President Zhou Shuhua said. "It will only provide more choice, not less. We will provide additional links related to your search at the site of the browser."

With the new partnership, Sina hopes that more than 60 percent of users will use its search engine, compared with 10 percent now. The alliance hopes to achieve a 20 percent market share in the mainland this year. It denied being part of a government move to replace Google. A representative said the timing of Google's access problems and the launch of the search alliance "was a coincidence."

Source: ZD Net.com

        

Read Serge Thibodeau's daily blogs on search engines at Serge Thibodeau Live.
We strongly suggest you bookmark our web site by clicking here.

Get your business or company listed in the Global Business Listing directory and increase your business. It takes less then 24 hours to get a premium listing in the most powerful business search engine there is. Click here to find out all about it.

Rank for $ales strongly recommends the use of WordTracker to effectively identify all your right industry keywords. Accurate identification of the right keywords and key phrases used in your industry is the first basic step in any serious search engine optimization program. The keywords you think are the best may be totally different than the ones recommended by WordTracker. Click here to start your keyword and key phrase research.

You can link to the Rank for Sales web site as much as you like. Read our section on how your company can participate in our reciprocal link exchange program and increase your rankings in all the major search engines such as Google, AltaVista, Yahoo and all the others.