Search engine Baidu is dead! Baidu’s hot search evaporated 26 billion overnight, and the official response came!
China Fund News reporter Wang Ying
Overnight, Baidu went on hot search again.
Last night, an article "Search Engine Baidu is Dead" published by the media "News Lab" was screened. The article accuses Baidu that more than half of the search results will point to Baidu’s own products, especially Baijiahao. And Baijiahao is full of a lot of marketing and poor quality content, which leads to a sharp decline in the content quality of Baidu search results.
Earlier on January 22nd, Citigroup lowered Baidu’s target share price to $205 and put it on the negative watch list.
U.S. stocks opened overnight, influenced by multiple factors such as the third downward adjustment of global economic growth rate by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which caused investors’ concerns. In recent days, U.S. stocks ended their gains and even fell, and China Stock Exchange also fell.
Under the downward trend, Baidu fell 6.4% last night.
At present, Baidu closed at $160.39, and its market value evaporated by about $3.8 billion overnight, or about RMB 26 billion, leaving only about $56 billion.
Baidu responded at noon.
Fang Chengcheng thinks that "the proportion of the whole station is of little significance"
In response to the criticism of the above article, Baidu issued a response at noon on January 23, saying that in the current Baidu search results, the content of Baijiahao accounts for less than 10% of the whole site.
In response, Baijiahao is an important measure to improve the ecological experience of Baidu App content, which can optimize the browsing experience problems such as slow page access and large typography differences encountered by users when using Baidu App search, and give users a concise and consistent search experience.
Baidu said that the existing 1.9 million creators cover all authoritative media and information institutions, and also contain a large number of high-quality self-media, constantly contributing deep and authoritative good content.
Baidu also said that it will continue to introduce high-quality media and creators, use good mechanisms to encourage authors to publish high-quality original content, and resolutely crack down on content cheating, vulgarity, and illegal numbering.
For Baidu’s response, Funjun contacted the author of the article "Search Engine Baidu is Dead". He responded: "The proportion of the whole station doesn’t make much sense. Everyone generally only looks at the first two pages. It will be more convincing if you can give the results of the first page. "
"Search engine Baidu is dead" screen.
Quickly boarded the Weibo hot search list
The article "Baidu, the search engine, is dead" was released last night, which quickly triggered a heated discussion. At present, it ranks seventh on Sina Weibo’s hot search list.
The article points out that there is a phenomenon in Baidu search in the last six months. Basically, more than half of the search results seen on the first page will point to Baidu’s own products, especially the "Baijiahao".
"Baijiahao is Baidu’s self-media platform. When it was first launched, it used to focus on high-quality authors and high-quality content. Later, after several adjustments, it has now become a content platform with marketing numbers as the main body-the content is all-encompassing, the quantity is large, and the quality is worrying."
This paper illustrates two problems through some screen capture examples of search: 1. Baidu frequently searches for the top 100 numbers with complicated content information and worrying quality; 2. Baidu guides its own products through the search box, and Baidu, as a search engine, is "dead".
For the questions raised in the article, Fund Jun switched to multiple terms in Baidu search and found similar problems. For example, search for "US stock market crash" in the top 5 of the latest relevant information:
Although they come from different media, they are all the media’s hundreds of numbers after clicking, not the media’s own website. For example, the first article of Yicai:
Fang can be called not his article.
Causing Baidu’s share price to fall.
After the publication of this article, it quickly fermented and read more than 100,000 in one hour, which triggered the trend of brushing the screen. It happened that Baidu fell more than 4% at the opening of the US stock market last night, and many media and public opinion claimed that the negative mentioned in the article caused Baidu’s share price to fall.
In this regard, the author of this article can make a statement in the circle of friends and Weibo on the morning of January 23rd.
According to the statement, many online media either implicitly or explicitly linked the article "Baidu, the search engine, is dead" with the 6.4% decline in Baidu’s stock today. Actually, my article is not that influential.
1. Today, Chinese stocks generally fell, and Baidu did not fall the most. For example, Weibo fell by 13.63%.
2. According to the analysis of Barron’s (https://www.barrons.com/articles/Baidu-takes-a-beating-on-Citi-price-cut-China-Fears-51548191513), the main reason for Baidu’s decline today is that Citigroup lowered its target price and worried about the increase of marketing expenses.
Fang Chengcheng expressed the hope that media friends would not mistakenly establish causality. After all, the original intention of writing that article was to have more accurate information.
According to public information, Fang Chengcheng graduated from the School of Journalism and Communication of Peking University, and is now a doctoral candidate at Annenberg School of Communication of the University of Pennsylvania, USA, and a former reporter of Southern Weekend.