Google may be ahead of competition in the U.S. and English speaking countries, but they still have much work to do in the international arena.

For example, Google has less than 5% of total search traffic in South Korea.

Now, Google versus Baidu?  Baidu is a pretty much copycat of Google localized for China.  (as far as layout goes)

Google will never be able to catch up to Baidu unless Google hires a lot of local Chinese people in China.

One thing about language is that you can never learn a new one so fast.  This goes for humans and machines, machines being a lot worse.

In this case, you can see how the localized version of Baidu brings way more search terms accordung to globalbydesign:

“Xu Ting”

• Baidu: 2,000,000 results
• Google.com: 1,440,000 results
• Google.cn: 1,330,000 results

Google has exerted a good deal of effort in localizing its name for China but it has not yet been accepted by the Chinese people. It may take some time. Some companies have chosen to simply use their English names in China, avoiding localization altogether, such as IBM.

Avoiding China might be the worst decision Google makes if they want to take a share of the biggest countries in the world.

[via] blogoscoped

Tags: baidu, biggest countries in the world, china, copycat, countries in the world, english names, english speaking countries, google, international arena, localization, search terms, search traffic, south korea, ting

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 8th, 2008 at 2:26 pm and is filed under google, web2.0.
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