Baidu announced its new “Drizzle Algorithm” (Xiyu, 细雨算法) recently, which has been launched in the middle of July.
Drizzle is used to tackle “title cheating” including fake official websites and keyword stuffing in page titles, as well as frequent embedding of contact information in body texts.
This is another algorithm update against “keyword stuffing” in titles apart from “Breeze” released in September 2017.
There has been rumors on Google coming back to China since last month, and Google refused to comment about it.
But China’s official mouthpiece The People’s Daily posted yesterday on both Facebook and Twitter that “Google is welcome to return to the Chinese mainland, but it must comply with local laws”, and this has evoked wide discussions among Chinese netizens, many of whom are talking about whether Baidu is still to be used after Google’s back, as they believe Google provides better results than Baidu.
In its Q2 financial results released on August 1st, Baidu announced that its “double-engine” strategy consisting of search and in-feed ads has remained strong, and its AI technology is optimizing the search experience.
It said that as many as 37% searches are satisfied by the first result on Baidu, and 38% among the search results are from quality content of Bear Paw Accounts, which are indexing data from 3.8 billion sources.
The percentage of Bear Paw content among all search results was 30% till the end of May, and according to Baidu’s plan, Bear Paw is expected to contribute 80% of all Baidu search results, achieving the search engine’s goal of “upgrade from websites to accounts”.
Baidu announced yesterday that it will release Monsoon algorithm update in mid June. Different from other algorithm updates released before, Monsoon is targeted solely at Bear Paw accounts which have been advocated by Baidu since November 2017.
According to Baidu, Monsoon focuses on content type deviation of Bear Paw accounts – owners of such accounts must stick to their account types when they create and release posts.
For example, if you don’t select “healthcare” or “medical” when you sign up your account, you couldn’t release any content related to these fields; and you couldn’t release any financial content either in case you haven’t registered your account as a financial one.
Such regulations are probably made to eliminate false information in both fields because there is abundant such information in China and they could cause great loss to their readers.
And since special algorithm update is to be released for Baidu’s own content product, Baidu will probably also treat both medical and financial content on websites differently in a cautious way.
According to Baidu’s official statement, Baidu has released an algorithm update in the end of May 2018 – Aurora Algorithm (Jiguang Algorithm, 极光算法), which is targeted to missing or abnormal release dates of posts.
To give audience a false impression that content of their websites is newly released, some site owners or SEOs choose to display posts on their websites randomly, without labeling release dates. This has become a widespread practice but is very harmful to user experience.
Baidu announced yesterday that its important research and analysis tool – Baidu Index is having an important upgrade for its mobile version.
Baidu Index’s mobile homepage is now providing data reports on some popular events, like Beijing Auto Show, with popular automobiles listed with respective index numbers.
Besides, the page also shows links of “hot keywords” pointing to their index data, such as popular game “King of Glory” and Chinese mobile phone brand MIUI.
On the 2018 China International Big Data Industry Expo held in Guiyang on May 26th, Baidu’s founder and CEO Robin Li Yanhong announced that Baidu’s “Simple Search” app would never display any ads.
“Simple Search” app was launched in July 2017, but it doesn’t seem to be widely-known until Robin Li’s promise yesterday made it a most-searched keyword.
Baidu announced yesterday that a search algorithm update is to be released in the end of May.
Subsequent to Thunder 1.0, this 2.0 update mainly targets “malicious cheating hyperlinks” and “malicious click fraud“, to improve search experience and enhance positive search ecosystem.
Thunder 2.0 will restrict impressions of cheating websites and remove cheating their links and clicks. Cheating behaviors of such sites will be recorded and permanent removal could be implemented for serious cases.
Baidu also warned site owners and SEOs to stay away from any fast-ranking techniques, and reiterated that quality content that meet visitors’ demands should be created for healthy traffic growth.
Baidu claimed that they will constantly combat illegal SEO techniques, in order to build a healthy search ecosystem.
Baidu announced yesterday that it’s about to launch a new algorithm update – Beacon-fire 2.0 (Fenghuo 2.0), after Baidu Beacon-fire Program listed in all Baidu’s algorithm updates, to penalize “user data theft” and “malicious hijacking”.
According to Baidu’s announcement, this new algorithm update will target two misconducts below, and any relevant websites would be removed from Baidu’s search results permanently upon being detected.
“Avengers: Infinity War (2018)” has been formally on show in China since May 11th, and by researching its Chinese name “复仇者联盟3” or “复联3” in short and relevant keywords on Baidu Index, we found four interesting facts as follows.