May 17 is the World Telecommunications day, but the dynamic news from the Internet search engine industry seems a bit overwhelming, busy with bring out a new market hotspots-Baidu on this day launched "Baidu Yellow Pages search (http://yp.baidu.com )", sina also launched the Regional search product test version local.sina.com.cn in the same period. Earlier, China Netcom's telephone book company, together with hichina, also launched an attack on the localized search engine service market, "www.chinayp.com.cn" was launched. Sohu recently acquired go2map at a price of nearly 0.1 billion yuan, and Sohu's local search was also coming soon.
Yellow Page search and local search are not familiar to Internet users. However, I moved the heavy yellow pages of the phone to the Internet. What kind of market situation can I create for Yellow Pages search?
Baidu Yellow Pages disappoint users
In April, when Baidu signed a cooperation agreement with China Telecom's Yellow Pages, Baidu was about to launch a yellow page search message in various ways. Many netizens "felt very happy" after learning about it ". Because Google has launched a search service local.google.com called "localization service", which allows users to find the daily necessities of life services and other information in a city, however, due to the lack of information, the Chinese version of the Google service has been launched, but it is still incomplete. Therefore, it can be said that Baidu's yellow page search function has finally kept pace with Google within a certain range.
However, when Baidu yellow pages were launched, it did not win users' praise as scheduled. Some netizens recorded the feelings after using Baidu yellow pages in their blog logs as follows: "There are only two words in the result: 'disappointed ', if you have to add a modifier before the two words, it is very disappointing '. "
Users are so disappointed that they may not be able to follow Baidu yellow pages to search for this product. Baidu yellow page search works with China Telecom's Yellow Pages. This should be a strong background, because China Telecom's yellow pages are promoted as "having the largest and most complete yellow page database in China. From the perspective of the page style of Baidu yellow page search, it is still simple and bright, but compared with the original pages of China Telecom Yellow Pages, there is no difference in search speed. Some users ridiculed: "It may be that the database of China Telecom is too full, making Baidu feel that it is enough. Therefore, Baidu does not seem to have analyzed and extracted websites from various regions through the search technology, naturally, you cannot find the 'actual content that does not exist in Yellow Pages '".
This seems to be the reason why netizens are "very disappointed" with Baidu yellow page search. In order to verify the Baidu yellow page search results, the reporter searched for "Starbucks" within the "Beijing" range and only found one search result. Even nationwide, there were only 14 search results. It is unrealistic to believe that such a result will satisfy the convenience of netizens.
However, in the above examples, among the 14 results of the search for "Starbucks", except for 1 in Beijing, the other 13 are concentrated in South cities such as Shanghai and Jiangsu and Zhejiang, this also confirms that China Telecom's yellow pages have many advantages in the southern region, however, it also exposes the yellow page search that Baidu and China Telecom jointly launched without any phone number resources in this field.
What is the value of the Old Yellow Pages?
When Baidu and China Telecom's Yellow Pages signed a strategic cooperation agreement in Shanghai in middle April, the two sides jointly declared: "from now on, the combination of Baidu's simple and quick search engine and China Telecom's rich and informative database on yellow pages will provide more convenient information search for 94 million Chinese users, it brings more convenience to people's lives and work. "
However, in an article titled "2004 incomplete inventory of non-mainstream search Economics" about enterprise search, the reporter saw the following point: "Unfortunately, currently, no enterprise can search well, so we have to replace the yellow pages of China Telecom. Yellow Page search is a product with great potential, but it is difficult to do. This requires a background and relationship between industry and commerce or China Telecom ....... The yellow pages of China Telecom seem to be operated by state-owned enterprises, so it is difficult to promote its development. With its current browsing speed and retrieval efficiency, as well as its poor and simple enterprise information, it is difficult to form a climate. "The author of this article was a staff member of Baidu, who later became a partner with China Telecom's Yellow Pages. More coincidentally, he was responsible for the Baidu Yellow Pages search project.
The reporter then contacted the author who worked in the product marketing department of Baidu. He admitted that Baidu had not yet formed an intention to cooperate with the yellow pages of China Telecom when writing this article, however, he insisted at this time that "Baidu's partners are the best in the field and the most suitable for Baidu. "
When a reporter asks "what is the best and most appropriate standard", he simply says, "Telecom yellow pages are the leading yellow pages in China, with a large scale and long time. "So, Baidu chose Telecom yellow pages, the" large-sized and long-time "Yellow Pages information provider, as a partner. Is it really a strong combination or helpless?
According to a search engine professional, Yellow Pages search for enterprise users in the search market has become a new business direction, and yellow pages require a large data system as support in this field, however, in the Chinese Yellow Pages market, the traditional approach is to "collect charges", so the updates to yellow pages are greatly affected, no matter which Yellow Pages company has data, it cannot be "fully authoritative ". In the new yellow pages on the Internet, some service providers have formed the idea of "getting started and getting more valuable", rather than effectively collecting statistics on raw Yellow Pages, this is not conducive to the development of yellow page search.
Reporter's Note
The future of Baidu Yellow Pages is worrying
In a press conference with Baidu yellow page search project owner, he repeatedly said, "Baidu yellow pages are still immature products in the test, and some changes are expected in May ". For specific changes, the owner should not talk about them.
Other localized search products that entered the market in the same period as Baidu yellow page search have their own characteristics. Some products are supplemented by detailed electronic maps, and some data are updated in a timely and accurate manner, or provide selection of bus routes and driving routes, these features recognized by netizens cannot be implemented in Baidu Yellow Pages. In such a market situation, the development of Baidu's Yellow Pages is indeed difficult. It takes time to prove whether it can continue and how far it can go.