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The Search Engine landscape in China is a changable beast.... now little known (in China) search engine Ask.com is halting operations in China. It was based in Hangzhou and I read in local press that this closure will affect about 130 staff.

I have got to say I lost the love of this engine when they killed off the butler (the days when we knew this engine as Ask Jeaves.com) and I was a fan even when Mr Diller got his hands on the company... seems a long time since those days now.

Forrester put out a great report on US Interactive Marketing Spend (The report will set you back $1749, but worth while for Search Marketers). Within the report, SEO was predicted to grow dramatically over the next three years in the US. What was interesting for me was that I saw clear parallels between the report finds for the US and my expectations for China. But within the report, two charts struck me as particularly exciting:

Baidu's revenues are on fire.... Those who said that with the departure of Google we would be seeing some bullish numbers coming out of Baidu were right... really right. This week, Baidu Inc. announced that they posted a 76.4% revenue increase for the third quarter ended September 30, 2010.

Total revenues in the third quarter of 2010 were CNY2.256 billion, a whopping 76.4% increase from the corresponding period in 2009. Net income in the third quarter of 2010 was CNY1.047 billion, a 112.4% increase (i bow my head low with respect and admiration at this achievement) from the corresponding period in 2009. Now thats a great quarter and one that surely must have people in the West sitting up and asking how this can be happening and happening so fast.

With Google gone, is Baidu set to completely dominate the Chinese search engine market or are there other challengers waiting in the wings?

This is a great topic and one that Leonard has done a great job in exploring this on his blog (The China Sourcing Blog). He makes some interesting conclusions and outlines the core issues facing Baidu and the smaller Chinese search engines. You can read his post below.