Do you think it’s more important for marketers to optimize for different search engines around the world than it used to be? Share your thoughts in the comments.

A recent report from BrightEdge indicates that the majority of search marketers think that it is becoming more important for sites to rank in global search engines. According to the firm’s survey, six out of ten believe it will become either “more” or “much more” important this year, compared to last year. 36% said “more,” while 27% said “much more.”

“SEO marketers at global companies aspire to reach customers worldwide, and drive leads, revenue and traf!c through global SEO initiatives,” says BrightEdge in the report. “Looking beyond a single country also helps them demonstrate a greater ROI on marketing investments. Not only does this boost marketing ROI but also maintains global brand consistency while accommodating local nuances. A global concerted approach to SEO marketing addresses these needs.”

Respondents were specifically asked about Chinese search giant Baidu, with 31% saying it would be much more important to rank in Baidu in 2013, and 10% saying “much more important”.

“With roughly 540 million internet users, 900 million mobile users and 388 million mobile internet users, China is the world’s largest internet market,” says BrightEdge. “Baidu, China’s dominant search engine, is one of the most valuable gateways to this large internet user base.”

You can download the report in its entirety here. It deals with numerous topics, far beyond the topic of global SEO.

Another recent report (via MarketingCharts) from Covario found that Baidu generated three times more global paid search clicks than Yahoo/Bing in Q1.

“I no longer believe it makes sense for any company to roll out an international SEO programme to multiple countries without also having a PPC campaign in place,” writes WebCertain CEO Andy Atkins-Krüger in a post for Search Engine Land about multinational SEO. “In some cases, we would recommend leading with PPC and landing pages first, rather than full blown (and relatively expensive) international SEO.”

He adds, “There are a number of reasons why we recommend this, but one is that user satisfaction on your site can be measured much more quickly with PPC than with SEO. Behavior really matters — so if you can study it first and quickly with PPC, your SEO efforts later will work out to be much more successful. I do worry that the association of search engine warnings with SEO being ‘bad’ are beginning to stick with people who are newer to the industry, and therefore, SEO is having a health warning attached.”

Dave Davies has a great article on international SEO considerations at Search Engine Watch, in which he concludes, “While expanding one’s market is generally a good thing, what people often forget is that you still have to maintain what you have, so make sure you have the resources. Many wars have been lost simply by trying to fight them on too many fronts.”

“If you have just enough resources to dedicate to a successful SEO strategy in your own country, it doesn’t make sense to expand in that you’ll be drawing resources away from the strategy that’s keeping the lights on,” he adds. “You need to make sure it’s the right decision for your business and if it is, make sure that you’re picking the right strategies to maximize your odds of success in the shortest period of time.”

In your international optimization efforts, you may also want to keep in mind some recent changes Google has made to its indexing systems. They’re now treating some country-code TLDs differently in terms of geography vs. generic. The list will change over time, but right now, these are the ccTLDs Google is considering generic: .ad, .as, .bz, .cc, .cd, .co, .dj, .fm, .gg, .io, .la, .me, .ms, .nu, .sc, .sr, .su, .tv, .tk and .ws.

Are you increasing your focus on international SEO, or are you simply focusing on your own region? Let us know in the comments.

iQiyi, formerly known as Qiyi, was the first online video platform in China to focus exclusively on fully licensed, high-def and professionally produced content, according to Baidu. While YouTube is obviously not exclusive to this content, it has been making major effort to feature more of it.

As of August, iQiyi was ranked as the top online video platform in the country (based on average time spent per user). It was also number two in terms of total monthly time spent (based on data from iResearch).

“Online video is a key strategic vertical for Baidu as user numbers and time-spend continue to increase exponentially, underscoring the tremendous potential in the sector,” said Baidu CEO Robin Li. “We are very pleased with the progress iQiyi has made and have confidence that iQiyi’s management will continue to grow its leading position. Going forward, we see users spending more and more time on online video and we will integrate iQiyi’s content more seamlessly into Baidu’s overall search and mobile services.”

iQiyi founder and CEO Dr. Yu Gong said, “iQiyi has established a great business foundation and strong brand recognition and we look forward to leveraging our relationship with Baidu to further drive superior user and advertising customer experience.”

Once the transaction is completed, Baidu will own the majority stake in the company. Providence Equity Partners recently sold a stake in Hulu as well.

Since the announcement, there has been one feature of iOS 6 that hasn’t gotten a lot of attention in the American press: Baidu. During the keynote, Apple announced that iOS (and OS X Mountain Lion), would be getting Baidu as an option for the default search engine in China. Baidu, in case you’re not familiar with it, is basically China’s answer to Google (after all, Google and China have a relationship that is… less than friendly). While Google rules the world of search throughout most of the world, Baidu’s share of the Chinese search market is around 80%.

Today, some of the terms of Apple’s deal with Baidu have become public. In an interview with Bloomberg, Baidu vice president Wang Jing said that Apple would be receiving a percentage of the revenues generated by Baidu searches on iOS and Mountain Lion devices. Though Wang declined to disclose the actual amount, he did say that the deal is similar to those Baidu has with other smartphone manufacturers. Thanks to such deals Baidu is, ironically, the default search engine on many Android phones in China.

It’s also interesting to note that Baidu and Google share many of the same web services such as a browser, an Android-base operating system, news, internet TV, and maps.

Baidu’s Director of International Communications Kaiser Kuo granted an interview to CNN a couple of years ago and he explained some of the initial success of Baidu:

‘You probably remember that early on there were surveys that showed that most Chinese internet users simply couldn’t spell the word Google to type it into their browser.”

“Baidu has really always anticipated the use [and] needs of the chinese internet user and done it very well.”

“…We are still very much focused on the Chinese market.”

Despite this focus, Kuo explains that he sees a bright future for the search engine and expects it to expand and grow in the years to come.

He explains further:

“We’ve never made a secret of the fact that we intend to become a global brand,”

It seems that Kuo now has some evidence to support his claims as Baidu has experienced an almost 80% profit growth when looking at the last quarter of 2011, as compared with the same time the year before.

Baidu is an organization to keep an eye on. Perhaps they will overtake Google in the future or even better yet, they will some how be affiliated with each other. I’ll try to stay up to date on what they’re doing.

The new phone sports an impressive set of tech specs, including a 4.3 inch AMOLED screen and a 1.5 Ghz dual-core Qualcomm processor. At the press conference Dell’s president of Greater China said that this would be the first of many Dell products coming to the Chinese smartphone market, and that China was becoming a sufficiently important market that many of Dell’s products would be launching there before other countries. This is already the case with the Dell Streak 10 Pro, a 10 inch Android tablet that launched in China earlier this year, but has yet to make it to American shores. In fact, Dell has pulled out of the US tablet market completely, at least for the time being, though the company maintains a presence in the tablet market in other countries, including China, where the Streak 10 Pro is fairly popular.

Some background info on that development: as we reported earlier, Facebook and Baidu are supposed to be working together on a new, China-specific social network.  And that has a sort of unstoppable sound to it, considering Facebook’s expertise in the field and Baidu’s search dominance in China.

So if the social network comes into being, proves popular, and attracts advertisers (who should already be more than familiar with Baidu), it could represent a significant new stream of revenue for whatever parties share in the profits.

More than a few investors have apparently perceived and bet on that possibility.  Baidu’s stock jumped 2.68 percent during normal trading hours today, putting its market cap at an impressive $50.63 billion.

By comparison, the respective market caps of AOL, IAC, Yahoo, and eBay are just $2.11 billion, $2.72 billion, $21.72 billion, and $40.47 billion.

Of course, the trick will be seeing if Baidu’s stock manages to sustain these levels over time.  Baidu and Facebook still haven’t confirmed the existence of any alliance, and even if they are working together, it’ll probably take more than a few weeks for their new social network to come together.

Baidu will have to deliver its first quarter earnings report soon, too, which is sure to have an effect one way or the other.

Bill Bishop, who’s bilingual and thereby able to read the original story, wrote yesterday, "Sina News reported on Friday afternoon that unnamed Baidu executives have flown to Silicon Valley to discuss possible cooperation with Facebook."

That would fit an established pattern of behavior.  First Mark Zuckerberg visited Baidu’s headquarters in December.  Then a Baidu exec called for Facebook to enter China, and Facebook opened an ad sales office in Hong Kong.

So it’s easy to imagine another meeting would follow, perhaps along with a formal arrangement.

And on that note, Bishop later wrote, "What might a Baidu-Facebook partnership look like?  I have no insider knowledge, but that won’t stop me from speculating.  It would probably take the form of a joint venture for China to launch a China-specific, sanitized version of Facebook that would have limited if any linkages and data sharing with the global, ex-China Facebook."

As always, we’ll be sure to report any significant updates.

To sort of cut to the chase: Baidu’s stock is up 6.69 percent in early morning trading, which shows the degree to which the company impressed investors.  Jumps like that don’t occur on an everyday basis.

As for some details, Baidu reported $371.3 million in net revenue (a 94.4 percent increase from a year earlier) rather than the $360.3 million analysts had forecast.  Also, the company reported $175.9 million in net profit (up 171.3 percent) instead of $156.2 million.

That led to earnings per share of $0.50 versus analysts’ estimates of $0.46.

Robin Li, Baidu’s CEO and chairman, stated as a result, "This has been another quarter of outstanding performance for Baidu, with market momentum and our continued improvement in monetization fuelling top line growth.  Baidu continues to build upon our clear leadership in China’s search market.  Looking forward we will further integrate search with online activities such as e-commerce and social networking and I am confident that Baidu will remain at the center of China’s Internet ecosystem."

Baidu’s execs expect it to continue to return good financial results, as well.

Michael Kan wrote earlier today, "The search engine giant’s share of Chinese search advertising revenue rose to 23.1 percent in the fourth quarter of 2010, a 1.5 percentage-point increase from the third quarter, Analysys International said Tuesday."

That’s a nice increase for a three-month period, especially since Google’s share had been sliding.

Of course, Kan noted, "At the end of 2009 . . . Google had a 35.6 percent share."  And Analysys International indicated that Baidu’s share of the market remained at 71.7 percent in the fourth quarter of 2010, so the dominant Chinese company isn’t exactly floundering.

Still, a gain is a gain under any circumstances, and Google fans might be able to interpret this as a sign Google’s rebounding from rock bottom.

We’ll be sure to keep an eye out for additional stats that could signal if Google’s managing to make gains in a country with over 1.3 billion people/potential users.

Michael Kan wrote today, "China’s largest search engine Baidu reports that its new microblogging service has grabbed more than 1 million users after being launched three months ago."

Then Kan continued, "[T]he service incorporates Twitter-like features, but is being built to become a fully fledged social networking platform.  Baidu Talk was launched in mid-September as a closed beta, with new users being brought in through invitation only."

So this is a very impressive achievement that appears to outshine Twitter’s own arrival at the million-user mark.  As a result, Baidu fans and shareholders may be able to look forward to the company hauling in revenue from a whole new field.

Then one other thing to consider is what this development might mean for Facebook in China, as one Baidu exec said earlier this week that he’d like to see Facebook enter the country.  Now it looks like Baidu would be able to lend the company some expertise if both sides were agreeable.

Baidu Talk will definitely bear watching over the next few months.