China’s 2008 Most Popular Google Terms Out!
Awkward feeling: I am writing an item about social and uncontrolled media, but it’s about China, freedom of speech (Tibet?) and Google (don’t be evil?). Mixed emotions. However, professionally I wanted to let you know, what Chinese asked most to Google in 2008. You might be surprised…
And although the firewall around the Chinese internet is 10 times larger than the Chinese wall itself, can you image the number of search queries that are done per day in China? Servers that are load balanced to the max and still smoking hot by the number of daily requests…
So, is the most wanted search query in Google China: MySpace? Tibet? David Beckham? English lessons? No, no, no and no. The only US name to make Google’s 2008 most popular keyword search list for China was: NBA (National Basketball Association). NBA was ranked at #10.
In fact, the NBA was the only non-Internet company to make the list, with the others all popular Chinese sites for news, videos, file sharing and more.
Google itself is an also-ran in China’s Internet search market, where Baidu.com reigns supreme with around 65 percent of all searches in China at the end of Q2 2008.
Still, Google’s 2008 most-searched lists make for an interesting look into what China’s Internet users are viewing.
The most popular search on Google in China during 2008 was for Sina, one of the most popular portals in the country. Another portal, Netease, came in second.
The online auction powerhouse Taobao, which is owned by Alibaba.com, took third, while video-sharing sites Youku and Tudou placed fourth and fifth, respectively.
Tencent’s QQ, which makes the most popular instant messaging software in China, came in sixth in the Google ranking. Sohu, which runs a popular news portal and search engine, was seventh.
Peer-to-peer (P2P) sharing sites took the remaining spots in Google’s China ranking. Xunlei, a popular P2P file/sharing software provider that was sued by members of the Motion Picture Association for copyright infringement earlier this year, came in at eighth. UUsee, a P-to-P streaming video Web site, was ranked ninth.
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Google China list 2008
Google also reported other 2008 word lists for China, one with search terms that grew fastest this year. This list included mainly popular news items or events, including actor Edison Chen in the top spot after a photo scandal in which racy pictures of himself with a number of prominent Hong Kong actresses, singers and others appeared on the Internet.
Other words on the list included the opening ceremony of the Summer Olympic Games; the Sichuan earthquake, which struck in May 2008 and killed around 70,000 people; and a list of unqualified milk powder brands, from the scandal in China in which melamine-laced milk killed several Chinese infants and hospitalized tens of thousands.
More info about Google in China? Check The Official Google Blog.
Source: NetWorkWorld
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Two thoughts:
1. When I clicked on Sina.com, it took 60 seconds to load. I wonder if that was the Chinese government hacking into my Macbook and making sure I’m not an undesirable.
2. Not to sound like a snob, but this list sounds comparable to a Western country’s a few years ago. E-bay. YouTube & AIM seem like similar products to Taobao, Youku, and QQ.
@ Roland
1. You might be right. If you believe in “big brother is watching you” and you have enjoyed the movie Enemy of the State, please also see Eagle Eye. China might be the same…??
2. It’s not snobby I think, you are just saying how it is. And that’s what we like
Cheers
Igor
All of the top 10 have Chinese content except for NBA, which is perfectly understandable since a large percentage of online Chinese population still don’t speak nor comprehend English language very well.
Nevertheless, the search results shows that humans are still social animals.
Btw, Sina took only 5 secs to load from my XP machine.
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I thought for sure their most popular search terms would be Guns N Roses’ Chinese Democracy!
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