Baidu - Services

Services

Baidu offers several services to locate information, products and services using Chinese-language search terms, such as, search by Chinese phonetics, advanced search, snapshots, spell checker, stock quotes, news, knows, postbar, images, video and space information, and weather, train and flight schedules and other local information. The user-agent string of Baidu search engine is baiduspider. Also, a Baidu application for Apple's iOS is available.

• Baidu Map
• Baidu started its Japanese language search service, run by Baidu Japan, the company's first regular service outside of China. It includes a search bar for web pages and image searches, user help and advanced services.
• Baidu Post Bar provides users with a query-based searchable community to exchange views and share knowledge and experiences. It is an online community bound tightly with Baidu's search service.
• Baidu News provides links to a selection of local, national and international news, and presents news stories in a searchable format, within minutes of their publication on the Web. Baidu News uses an automated process to display links to related headlines, which enables people to see many different viewpoints on the same story. Chinese government and Chinese industry sources stated that Baidu received a license from Beijing, which allows the search engine to become a full-fledged news website. Thus Baidu will be able to provide its own reports, besides showing certain results as a search engine. The company is already getting its news department ready. Baidu is the first Chinese search engine to receive such a license.
• Baidu Knows (百度知道) provides users with a query-based searchable community to share knowledge and experience. Through Baidu Knows, registered members of Baidu Knows can post specific questions for other members to respond and also answer questions of other members.
• Baidu MP3 Search provides algorithm-generated links to songs and other multimedia files provided by Internet content providers. Baidu started with a popular music search feature called "MP3 Search" and its comprehensive lists of popular Chinese music, Baidu 500, based on download numbers. Baidu locates file formats such as MP3, WMA and SWF. The multimedia search feature is mainly used in searches for Chinese pop music. While such works are copyrighted under Chinese law, Baidu claims on its legal disclaimer that linking to these files does not break Chinese law. This has led other local search engines to follow the practice, including Google China(Hong Kong), which uses an intermediate company called Top100 to offer a similar MP3 Search service.
• Baidu Image Search enables users to search millions of images on the Internet. Baidu Image Search offers features such as search by image size and by image file type. Image listings are organized by various categories, which are updated automatically through algorithms.
• Baidu Video Search enables users to search for and access through hyperlinks of online video clips that are hosted on third parties’ Websites.
• Baidu Space the social networking service of Baidu, allows registered users to create personalized homepages in a query-based searchable community. Registered users can post their Web logs, or blogs, photo album and certain personal information on their homepages and establish their own communities of friends who are also registered users. By July 2009, it had reached 100 million registered users
• Baidu Encyclopedia, is China's largest encyclopedia by users and page views/web traffic; second largest encyclopedia by article count (after Hudong).
  • China Digital Village Encyclopedia (中国数字乡村大百科全书), in June 2009, Baidu announced it would compile the largest digital rural encyclopedia in China, according to China Securities Journal. It is expected to include 500,000 administrative villages in China, covering 80% of the total 600,000 villages in China. Baidu is creating the content of this encyclopedia largely from participants of its 'rural information competition' (乡村信息化大赛) (xiangcun.baidu.com), on which it has spent roughly five million yuan on incentives. Baidu sees China's rural areas as great potential for electronic business (e-business), evidenced by the fact that revenue grew the fastest from agriculture, forestry, animals and fishery in the company's keyword promotion project, a crucial source of Baidu's total revenue. In addition to Baidu Encyclopedia, the company will scale up keyword promotion and take advantage of other products, such as Baidu Zhidao and Baidu Youa, to provide consultation, brand ad exhibitions and online network marketing/sales platform support, marketing information for rural tourism and promoting local products.

• Baidu Search Ranking provides listings of search terms based on daily search queries entered on Baidu.com. The listings are organized by categories and allow users to locate search terms on topics of interest.
• Baidu Web Directory enables users to browse and search through websites that have been organized into categories.
• Baidu Government Information Search allows users to search various regulations, rules, notices and other information announced by People's Republic of China government entities.
• Baidu Postal Code Search enables users to search postal codes in hundreds of cities in China.
• Educational Website Search allows users to search the Websites of educational institutions. Baidu University Search allows users to search information on or browse through the Websites of specific universities in China
• Baidu Legal Search enables users to search a database that contains national and local laws and regulations, cases, legal decisions, and law dictionaries.
• Baidu Love is a query-based searchable community where registered users can write and post messages to loved ones.
• Baidu Patent Search enables users to search for specific Chinese patents and provides basic patent information in the search results, including the patent’s name, application number, filing date, issue date, inventor information and brief description of the patent.
• Baidu Games is an online channel that allows users to search or browse through game-related news and content.
• Baidu-Hexun Finance, a financial information Website, with partner Hexun.com, a financial information service provider in China with news reporting and securities consulting licenses. Users can search or browse through economic and financial news, information relating to personal wealth management and related market statistics.
• Baidu Statistics Search enables users to search statistics that have been published by the Government of the People's Republic of China
• Baidu Entertainment is an online channel for entertainment-related news and content. Users can search or browse through news and other information relating to specific stars, movies, television series and music.
• Baidu Tongji is Baidu's web analytics platform. It provides users with many reports about visitors to their website, such as a report on the source of visitors to their website, a user demographics report, reports on content viewed on site, and a heat map report.
• Baidu Dictionary provides users with lookup and text translation services between Chinese and English.
• Baidu Youa, an online shopping/e-commerce platform through which businesses can sell their products and services at Baidu-registered stores.
• Baidu Desktop Search, a free, downloadable software, which enables users to search all files saved on their computer without launching a Web browser.
• Baidu Sobar, a free, downloadable software, displayed on a browser's tool bar and makes the search function available on every Web page that a user browses.
• Baidu Wireless provides various services for mobile phones, including a Chinese-input front end processor (FEP) for various popular operating systems including Android, Symbian S60v5, and Windows Mobile.
• Baidu Anti-Virus offers anti-virus software products and computer virus-related news.
• Baidu Safety Center, launched in 2008, provides users with free virus scanning, system repair and online security evaluations
• Baidu Internet TV (known as Baidu Movies) allows users to search, watch and download free movies, television series, cartoons, and other programs hosted on its servers
• Chinese-language voice assistant search services for Chinese speakers visiting Japan was launched in 2008, with partner Japanese personal handy-phone system operator Willcom Inc.
• Discovery Networks Asia-Pacific, joint venture with Discovery Communications, focusing on science, technology, space, natural history, engineering, paleontology, archaeology, history and culture.
• Baidu Index (known as 百度指数) allows users to look up the search volume and trend for certain hot keywords and phrases. It can serve as a Baidu keyword research tool.
• Baidu Bookmarks (known as Baidu Soucang) is a social bookmarking service supported by Baidu.com
• Baidu Browser is a web browser first released as a beta in July 2011. It has been noted that the user interface looks very similar to Google Chrome/Chromium.
• Baidu Yi is a smartphone operating system based on Android OS, announced in September 2011.
• Baidu Library is an open online platform for users to share documents. All the documents in Baidu Library are uploaded by the users and Baidu does not edit or change the documents. Users can read and download lecture notes, exercises, sample exams, presentation slides, materials of various subjects, variety of documents templates, etc. However, it is not completely free. In order to download some documents, users should have enough Baidu points to cover the points asked by the uploaders. Users could gain Baidu points by making contribution to Baidu Library and other users, such as uploading documents, categorizing documents, evaluating documents, etc.
• Baidu Experience is a product of Baidu primarily focusing on supporting the users with practical problems. In other words, it helps the users to solve the "how to do" problem. It was launched in October 2010. In architecture, Baidu Experience has integrated and reformatted Baidu Encyclopedia and Baike Knows. The first difference between Baidu Experience and Baidu Knows is that the former concentrates on specific "how to do" problems while the later contains a wider range of problems. The second difference is that users could share their experience without being asked on Baidu Experience.
• Baidu around You is a searching and sharing platform aiming at supporting the users with making their consumption decisions. There are currently 7 main categories of information on Baidu around You, including food, shopping, recreation, hotels, fitness, beauty and traveling. In addition, Baidu around You provides the users with convenient services and local information, partially coming from the users and searchable by cities.