Chinese search engine Jike has announced it is to start offering PPC advertising, english.peopledaily.com reports.
Jike, which is run by Chinese newspaper People’s Daily, is a government-owned search engine but promises to return “natural” search results.
Since being unveiled to great fanfare in June 2011, the search engine has steadily grown its user base and site offering, with it now offering images/video results alongside web pages. A branded Android app was also created and a commercial strategy has been outlined. The owners are now hoping this growth will continue with the unveiling of a new paid search system.
Small and medium-sized firms are expected to be targeted for inclusion, with free advertising touted to be offered for 1,000 SMEs over the next three years.
Making the announcement in the People’s Daily, a Jike spokesperson explained how “jike.com still has a long way to go compared with Baidu or Google.” They added, however, that its overall goal is to “transmit information in a fair and barrier-free manner [and] provide the most natural search results to its users.”
Some have speculated how Jike will manage to move out of Baidu’s shadow, as the two not only share a similar interface design but also an almost-identical red and blue colour scheme, theregister.co.uk reports.
