Baidu Baike is a wiki with an estimated 322 million visits/month, and its entries very commonly appear on the first page of Baidu search results.
Consumers often view brands with Baidu Baike entries as being more authoritative than those that don’t.
So, if you have a business, brand, or product to promote, it’s a good idea to try to get a Baidu Baike entry for it.
Plus, there’s one more potential benefit: We’ve noticed that brand websites with links from Baidu Baike suddenly seem to get more organic traffic and better indexation from Baidu.
In a search for “Canada University of Toronto,” the first two results are ads, and the second result is a Baidu Baike entry.
Baidu Baike Vs. Wikipedia
You might be wondering: How does Baidu Baike compare to Wikipedia?
Compared to Wikipedia, Baidu Baike
- has far more Chinese-language entries than Wikipedia does—16 times as many according to SCMP;
- is more censored (if you’re a business in a non-restricted industry this isn’t likely to affect you), and
- contains advertising. It is a for-profit business.
Your Wikipedia entry will probably never be seen in China, as Wikipedia is usually blocked. Plus, Baidu tends to show its own properties in the search results.
How to Get on Baidu Baike
To be listed, your business first needs to be considered famous enough to be worthy of a listing.
To make this happen for businesses brand new to the Chinese market, we first publish a few articles on various authoritative websites (e.g., Sina, Xinhuanet, People’s Daily Online).
Three articles will usually be enough.
This makes the business seem legitimate and also provides source material that can be linked to the Baidu Baike entry.
Tips for your source articles:
- The news should be real.
- The article should not be too long. In general, 800 Chinese characters is about the right length.
- Do not take up more than about 30% of the article with information about your company.
Once you have three articles, then it’s a good time to apply for a Baidu Baike entry. It might help if you use a marketing agency experienced with the application process and, therefore, more likely to get the entry accepted sooner.
The whole process might take up to six months. It takes that long because we need to plan and publish the articles, then wait for them to be indexed by Baidu. For reasons unknown, sometimes Baidu will not accept an article at first but will accept it a couple of weeks later.
How to Write a Baidu Baike Entry
If you’ve read Wikipedia, you probably have a good idea of what a wiki entry looks like, and Baidu Baike entries are similar in appearance.
Make sure the content is written descriptively, with a clear and logical structure, but avoid using overly colorful or boastful language.
We recommend you add basic info about your brand/business/school, and Baidu Baike has templates you can start with. At first, your main goal should be to get the entry accepted, and it’s easier to do that by creating an informative entry that is not overly thorough.
After it’s accepted, you should update the entry with new information about twice a year, making it longer and more thorough.
To illustrate, here are two examples of our Baidu Baike entries at different stages.
The first has just been posted and only includes information from one source article. In contrast, the second has been updated several times already. As you can see, there’s a huge difference in terms of length and detail.
Remember—Certain topics are prohibited and will not be considered. If you want to get your business, product, or brand on Baidu Baike, you need to avoid discussing these things:
- Weapons
- Porn
- Gambling
- Crypto
- Politics
- Taiwan (unless handled in just the right way)
Discussion of health/medical topics is possible but very touchy. This is not a complete list.
A Video Tour of Baidu Baike
For a four-minute video tour, check here: