What did Baidu make money from at first?

Baidu's homepage is only 4K, as simple as a piece of tissue paper. But it responds to hundreds of millions of search requests every day. Although there are so many people using Baidu, after Baidu's amazing listing, more people began to watch Baidu. Many people have such a curiosity: Baidu, what makes money?

When Baidu interviews new employees, this question is often used as a killer: "Everyone knows that using Baidu search engine is free, but do you know what Baidu makes a profit as a commercial company?" If the other party can answer the words "bidding ranking", then this interview will increase the impression points invisibly.

At present, there are millions of enterprises that use Baidu's bidding ranking. Once a car dealership bought a competitive ranking in Baidu and sold a Bentley worth 25 million at a price less than that in 500 yuan, which is the highest return on investment in online promotion in China so far.

What is the bidding ranking? Friends who have used the magic thing of search engine know that there is a lot of information you want in the world distributed in hundreds of millions of web pages. Every time you enter a keyword, Baidu will help you list the web pages containing this keyword in less than 0.0 1 second. Usually, a column contains thousands of related web pages. At this time, it is very important to put what web pages in the top few. Because most users can't read the future pages of 100.

Bidding ranking is to auction the first few items of this result to websites that want to be noticed by others early. The reason is the same as CCTV auctioning the weather forecast to advertisers in advance. The difference is that CCTV charges by time, how much is a month and how much is a year; Baidu, on the other hand, charges according to how many people see your webpage through Baidu. Of course, TV viewers and netizens who use search engines don't have to pay, just pay attention and look at the advertisements.

On September 22nd, 20001year, the competitive price ranking was officially launched. At the same time, Baidu has also launched its own website, and netizens can directly use the search engine through Baidu. This business model, which later made Baidu 80% revenue, was originally developed by an intern named Liu Zizheng. At that time, the background system was called ten points, because when the bidding ranking was just launched, the lowest price per click was 10 cent. Note that after the netizen clicks on the advertiser's website, the advertiser pays Baidu a dime. If someone wants to be seen before you, he can pay a dime at a time. Everyone underestimated the market appeal of bidding ranking. Wang Zhan, who is in charge of bidding ranking, clearly remembers that the income on the first day after the introduction of bidding ranking was 1.9 yuan. This is because the bidding ranking is prepaid, and the real charge is deducted by clicking. Even if a website can rank first, there is no charge if no netizens click on it.

Shi Youcai was in charge of business development after arriving at Baidu. His first business email was sent to a travel agency website in Sichuan called Dream Tour, and he became the first customer in Baidu's bidding, with a down payment of 100 yuan. Now, Dream Tour has become a VIP customer of Baidu, with hundreds of thousands of businesses a year. But it took almost half a month for this 100 yuan. The sales staff were very happy in the first few days when the bidding ranking was launched. The first day's income is 1.9 yuan, the second day is more than 3 yuan, the fourth day is more than 10, and the fifth day is 200 yuan. Although there is not much money, the growth rate is amazing.

Baidu is not what it used to be, and now its annual income is more than 300 million yuan.