Google Beats Baidu in Blind Test

Google China According to a blind test conduct by Beijing-based China IntelliConsulting shows that Google’s Chinese search surpasses local competitor Baidu.com in terms of search results quality.

Google achieved an overall satisfactory rating from 48.2% of the 2,740 Web surfers who participated, beating Baidu’s 39.8%. Participants in the test accessed the search engines through pages that disguised the companies' identities.

The quality of their search results were rated for the eight most common types of searches in China: news, Internet and technology, finance and business, entertainment, shopping and dining, travel and transportation, science and education, and government services and public information. Google is ahead of Baidu in all categories but entertainment, suggesting Baidu has a better understanding of the music and movie tastes of Chinese Internet users.

The survey also find out that users were most dissatisfied (scoring a 30.3% disapproval rate) with the connections to Google.cn have been highly unstable, particularly during the test period, when it was periodically blocked by Chinese censors, resulting in blank pages and slow speeds.

Google was also complaint about its failure to provide page-caching in China, the absence of a search function for free downloads of music in the MP3 format and for not providing a popular chat-room like message posting board called post bar.

I suppose Google China is trying very hard to catch up with in entertainment and other local search services by launching Life Search (the Chinese version of Google Base) in China.