What is Baidu Relevant Search?
As its name suggests, Baidu relevant search means that the Baidu system provides relevant keyword suggestions when you type the keyword that you want to search. It appears in two forms. One is before the search and the other after the search.
Before the search looks like the picture below, i.e. when you type ‘seo’ in the search box, it has a dropdown with 10 suggested keywords.
Baidu relevant search also exists after the search. Like the picture below shows, after pushing the search button when searching ‘seo’, I got a SERP (Search Engine Result Page), and at the bottom of the SERP, you can see 10 suggested relevant search terms.
How does understanding Baidu Relevant Search benefit online marketers?
Protecting your brand
For example, recently a popular blogger Luo Yonghao has been complaining about Siemens washing machines on his blog and on Sina Weibo. Now when I type Luo Yonghao (罗永浩), the fourth suggested keyword is Luo Yonghao Siemens (罗永浩 西门子).
When you select the term, you will find the SERP is full of the negative content about Luo’s complaint.
Hence, to defend the Siemens brand, flushing down Luo Yonghao Siemens (罗永浩 西门子) from the top ten relevant searched terms of Luo Yonghao (罗永浩) is very critical.
Building up your term
If you want to build up your own terms by associating them with other well-known generic terms, Baidu relevant search is also a good approach.
For example, say you have your own target generic brand called ‘云应用平台Cloud Application Platform’, which is not a popular term on Baidu. However, if that term becomes the relevant search term 云计算 (Cloud Computing), you will benefit from the hundreds of searches per day from 云计算 (Cloud computing) by getting traffic from people clicking either the dropdown in search box or suggested keywords at the bottom of the SERP (Search Engine Result Page).
Baidu Relevant Search Execution
Before you try to associate your term with popular terms or flush out your unwanted term from Baidu relevant search, you need to understand how Baidu relevant search works technically through URL’s.
1. http://www.baidu.com/s?wd=seo&rsv_bp=0&rsv_spt=3&inputT=775
This is the URL of the Search Engine Result Page from searching ‘seo’.
2. http://www.baidu.com/s?bs=seo&f=8&rsv_bp=1&rsv_spt=3&wd=seo+agency&inputT=17141
This is the URL of the Search Engine Result Page from searching ‘seo agency’ from page 1.
This is the URL of the Search Engine Result Page after clicking on the 9th suggested keyword – ‘seo 公司(company)’ in the dropdown of page 1’s search box.
4. http://www.baidu.com/s?wd=%B1%B1%BE%A9seo%B9%AB%CB%BE&rsp=0&oq=seo%B9%AB%CB%BE&f=1&rsv_ers=xn1
This is the URL of the Search Engine Result Page after clicking on the suggested keyword – ‘seo 公司(company)’ at the bottom of page 3.
To help you better understand the URL’s above, please see the following explanation of the URL parameters:-
s? means search
wd means current searched keyword
bs means previous searched keyword
rsv_bp=0 means the first time search
rsv_bp =1 means the second or more time search
rsv_spt = 3 means IE browser
inputT means response time in millisecond
f=8 means searched by the user
f=3 means searched by selecting suggested term on the dropdown in search box
f=1 means searched by selecting suggested term on the search result page
oq=seo means the original search keyword is seo
rsp=9 means that this is the 9+1th relevant keyword
%B9%AB%CB% means Chinese characters
If you understand the whole mechanism, you will see that Baidu Relevant Search is based on human behavior. To be more specific, when there are more people searching for ‘seo agency’ on the Search Engine Result Page of ‘seo’, the more possible it is that Baidu will add ‘seo agency’ as a suggested keyword of ‘seo’ in either the search box dropdown or at the bottom of the SERP.
This has been used by some SEO agencies to manipulate keyword suggestions, so let’s see how Baidu will update its algorithm to curb any possible blackhat SEO techniques.
