Baidu Chinese Paid Search (part 3)

Hi guys,

This is the third and also the last in the introductory series about “Baidu Chinese Paid Search“. However, we may come back to Baidu in a very near future cause my “slave” Liz already prepared another 10 pages to compare Baidu and Other Search Engines.

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3. Baidu Paid Search Campaign optimization

Inside Baidu:

One thing you’ll notice straight away after logging in is the lack of campaign overview and how everything is in Chinese!
There is currently no option for language selection mind you… If you understand Chinese, however, you’ll notice the page is like a portal with related news, options to go to the account centre, help centre etc.
This shows that from a business stand point, most of Baidu advertisers right now are from main land China.

Baidu Paid Search Account Centre

Oh interesting! There isn’t an overview of your campaigns here either! Instead you get to choose which parts of the account centre you wish to visit. Actually it’d be slightly easier if you simply click at the top menu bar. Only problem? Not all links found at the account centre is found there… only the major links.

(Top Menu Bar: Baidu Marketing Centre/Summary Page, Account Centre Main Page, Manage Keywords, Add Keywords, Campaign Management, Daily Reports, Edit Account Information, Log Out)

While it is hard to get used to at first, it is slightly easier to navigate around if you don’t take into consideration the 2 overview pages with no actual campaign information (compared to a certain search engine whose platform is named after a country in Central America.). Using the drop down menus, you have the option of choosing different type of views (by campaign, keywords etc).

“My gripe is how Baidu does not provide any information for impressions. If the campaign is also measured using CTR as a factor, then you have the hard task of explaining why Baidu doesn’t have that… cos it simply doesn’t!” Liz commented.

One can only guess the rationale behind this lack of information…

This brings me to my fave part of Baidu… the lack of reporting options!

Baidu Paid Search Reporting Function

For someone who is used to Google’s wide range of reports, frustrated with Yahoo’s inflexible reporting system… welcome to the best of the worse!

Reporting

• Daily Report

Date, clicks, cost, cpc, quality index

• Keywords Summary Report

Keyword, clicks, cost, cpc

• Daily Campaign Performance report

Date, campaign, clicks, cost, cpc, quality index

• Daily Keywords Performance report

Date, keyword, clicks, cost, cpc, quality index, avg. position

• Specific Keywords report (to enter keyword)

Date, keyword, clicks, cost, cpc, quality index

• Specific Campaign report (to enter campaign name)

Date, Campaign, clicks, cost, cpc, quality index

Have I already mentioned that we can’t find impressions or ctr information? Guess what? It gets better! There is only one keyword report with avg position information but you have no idea which campaign it belongs to! Don’t bother about ad copy report too… there’s only one ad tied to the keyword…

In any case, for Baidu I swear i hear it telling me loudly and clearly… “just choose to get campaign level information or keyword information! there is no such thing as both! don’t cause me trouble… my main job is get more revenue (gee, sounds familiar) not to churn out useless reports with too much info!” i swear that message is real and true but chandler says i’ve gone nuts… 

– Liz said

So what can i do then if i really need both data? alas manual labour… ”

darn google for promoting laziness… it’s the macdonald’s of search engine. popular, fast and efficient 

– Liz added on.

Please find the reporting interface below:

Baidu Paid Search Keyword Management

As far as i understand, there is no limit to how many keywords you can have in one ad group.
You can set the max cost per click you want to pay per keyword as well.

Liz offered some explanation in case we all get lost looking at a page in Chinese.

From the Top:

• Current number of keywords is 277, each page is showing 20 keywords and you are at page 1 (total 14 pages)

• Drop down menus

 

• • Campaigns
  • Keywords
  • Keywords to show on page
  • Arrange keywords by
  • Keywords search

• Select keywords view by:

• Keyword bid management detailed overview: keyword, status, min cpc, current bid, etc
• Keyword bid management simplified overview
• Keyword details

Keyword Addition

Again, some of the explanations are:

• You can only add 20 keywords each time
• From the table:
• • Keyword
  • Ad Title
  • URL Destination
  • Ad Description

Keyword information you can get includes: Current position – Enter keyword, Related keywords, Minimum CPC

 

Baidu Paid Search Ad copy

Well, unfortunately there is nothing much to say about this section because Baidu only allows you to have one ad copy that is tied to keyword.
So there aren’t any options for ad rotations, landing page optimization using the same ad copy etc..

Baidu Paid Search: Set Geographical targeting

The good thing is you can either choose to target the whole of China or zoom into different regions.

Baidu Paid Search: Other campaign management options

Set Daily Budget

Set Campaign Expiry Date

Set Day Part Targeting

Third Party Tracking

The good thing is we can add in tracking parameters at the end of the Destination URLs just like Google/Yahoo.
Many of the third party tracking tools are now double byte enabled so we know which keyword converts, which doesn’t.
However, i don’t think API feed from Baidu is up to expectation since Baidu does not provide much information for reporting.

Well that concludes the introductory series about Baidu Chinese Paid Search. As per usual, any comments, feedbacks are welcome and most appreciated.
You may want to refer back to Baidu Chinese Paid Search Part 2 or Baidu Paid Search Part 1
We will come back soon with comparison between Baidu and other search engines.