Rumors are swirling on the Chinese Internet that the Chinese video website Youku.com has started to block the video search of Baidu and Google.

At present, videos from Youku.com cannot be found in Baidu's video search results and the number of Youku.com's videos in Google's video search results has been greatly reduced.

Youku.com told local media that the company has a good relationship with Baidu and the strategic cooperation between the two companies is successful. In terms of the self-development plans of Youku.com, the company has been committed to optimizing its contents, structure and user resources. At present, Youku.com has a large user group and the company need to protect the video experience of users who directly visit its website, because the loyalty and value of these users are relatively higher than those who search videos via search engines.

But different voices on chat boards say that Youku.com's block of video searches is a way to reduce traffic, so as to cut its costs to ease the financial pressure and deal with the financial crisis.

In June 2007, Youku.com achieved a strategic cooperation with Baidu.com and placed its links on the pages of Baidu, but the cooperation has ended. Youku.com's competitor Ku6.com also cooperates with Baidu in the same way.