Lol Baidu??? Sounded like a 21st century, very modern, religion or some crazy martial art... Well I have to say I have never heard of it, and I represent basically the whole of Australia, very unknown over here...??? ~Sheen91
Not Chinese. I have been researching the international monetization issue since 2005. I actually decided to go with Russia and Japan rather than China for many reasons. Japan is a no-brainer (wealthy & wired). Russian domains get a lot of traffic and are the bulk of my revenue. Cyrillic was a pleasant surprise. Chinese is too speculative for me, and I cannot compete with those who read and write Chinese. It was a painful decision, but I cannot compete with Korean domainers, either. Along the way, I learned a lot about China, Chinese domaining, and the webmaster scene from Chinese in PRC, Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan, etc. I only have a few dozen Chinese domains (some are .hk, some .com, and the rest) but, for those with Chinese language skills, it may be a goldmine. If you have the guts, the domainer scene in China is VERY lively! PM for sites to check, but have a good translator handy and don't buy anything without checking with several sources. Also, appraisals from different Chinese can be very different, so don't just listen to one person. I have thousands of Russian, Swedish, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Polish, Japanese, English, Thai, Greek, Hebrew, Arabic, etc. domains. I will stick with Latins, Cyrillic, and Japanese for the most part and hedge with a few good domains from other regions. Arabic domains will probably turn out to be the big surprise in the long-term, I think. Latins are a maybe. Cyrillic and Japanese are an excellent bet. It is interesting to see domain forums in other languages and realize that we are all asking the same questions (essentially) and most never wonder what the other domainer groups are like. We are all in our own (insert name of SE here - Google, Yahoo, Baidu, etc.) worlds. I do enjoy being part of an English language forum here. However, the focus on USA market seems limiting. On the other hand, the professionalism and willingness to help each other is incredibly refreshing. All these skills are transferrable to any language, so I am very happy that a friend gave me the link. Thanks for letting me be a part of this forum.
Baidu is for Chinese language sites. No need to worry about it if you do not want Chinese surfers. If you do have Chinese pages, you would already know Baidu. Do you not think some Asians laugh at the funny name 'Google' and ask if it is a soft drink? Two different worlds.
Baidu is getting big, and will continue to grow - which I'm very happy with. Maybe not the next Google, but close to it.
Indeed, Yahoo had the world at their feet years ago but totally blew it. Google will take some beating and I cannot see it being beaten for a number of years to come, if ever.
Parking and development (e.g. Adsense). Highly searched single word and two-word combo dot com keywords get type-in traffic in any language. A good keyword can easily pay for itself and more, even for a language like Georgian (small country, low internet use, not wealthy). I am far behind in the development side, so I came here. Parking can only go so far and doesn't work as well with non-dot-coms. I would normally never write this, but many other languages do not have webmasters as skilled as those that work primarily in English. The competition in English-language SEO is fierce compared to many other languages.
i've never even heard of baidu (can you tell i'm e-sheltered?) so it can't be the next google, i said so! google ftw!
ansi, now you have.. Yes, with China's growing influence on the world, it SE business will grow too.. However, my guess is it's not easy to have a share of the pie if you are not familiar with the culture and language.