Baidu.com (BIDU), the largest Chinese search engine service provider, is initiating a large scale website ranking program to offer website certification rankings for its 110,000 partner websites.
Baidu's partner websites grew quickly and broke 100,000 in the past year, which had made it one of the largest Chinese advertisement alliances in China. Baidu.com's preliminary quarterly results show that the company's partner websites earned more than CNY70 million in 2006 and they are expected to get more income share from Baidu.com after this new service is launched.
Baidu's launching of the new service is believed to be an action against its long time competitor Google. Baidu is currently the top search engine in China, with Google ranking either second or third, depending on the survey.
