Lex专栏：百度与中国搜索市场_时事_双语阅读-查字典英语网

Lex专栏：百度与中国搜索市场

If China’s economy has slowed, one would not know it from a quick glance at the performance of Baidu. Revenues at the country’s biggest internet search engine by share of advertising sales were up 60 per cent from a year earlier in the second quarter – net income was 70 per cent higher. More of that is forecast for the next three months.

中国经济增长固然放缓了，但你不会从百度(Baidu)的业绩中发现这一迹象。以广告销售收入的市场份额计算，百度是中国最大的网络搜索引擎，其第二季度营收同比增长了60%，净利润增长了70%。预计未来三个月还将更高。

Notably, small and medium-sized enterprises – one of China’s most beleaguered sectors – is driving that growth. Baidu added 31,000 advertising customers over the quarter, most of them SMEs. After all, more targeted search advertising is a good use of marketing budgets shrinking under slowing exports and rising labour costs.

值得注意的是，中小型企业——中国处境最困难的部门之一——推动了百度的增长。百度在过去一个季度新增广告客户3.1万个，其中大部分是中小型企业。毕竟，随着出口减慢和劳动力成本上涨，企业的营销预算有所收缩，因此做更多的针对性搜索广告可以更加有效地利用这些预算。

Still, there are signs that margin pressure is growing for Baidu. The fact that the search giant is tapping China’s smaller cities to support much of its customer growth translates into smaller advertising budgets. Ad spend per customer picked up by a third from a year earlier last quarter, but this was the lowest growth since the start of 2010.