Over the years, Google had became one of our major internet search engine, however due to the political reasons, starting from 9 Nov 2012, the PRC government had blockade all PRC area citizen access to Google sites and its functions including Gmail, Google translation and Google map. (Related news source: Womack B. (2012) Google Sees China-Traffic Drop, Web Monitor Cites Block, http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-11-09/google-sees-china-traffic-drop-web-monitor-cites-block) Google had posted an announcement on their official site, stating Mainland China service availability to their website had been interfered/blocked. (Refer to http://www.google.com.hk/prc/report.html)
Analysist said one of the major reason that the Google search is being blocked is due to The Chinese Communist Party’s 18th Congress is hold now in PRC, and the political leaders wanted to stop its citizens from searching medias which carries negative message about te PRC political party. In my point of view, another major reason PRC Government doesn’t want Google to stay is that they wanted to protect the interest of its local entreprenurs (i.e. Baidu, Sohu).
So what are other search engines the marketer can used in promoting the business in PRC?
The following are some famous search engines in PRC
www.baidu.com (Largest Chinese search engine)
www.sogou.com (Subsidiary of Sohu.com, Alibaba is also one of the major shareholder of Sogou)
www.soso.com (Owned by Tencent)
cn.yahoo.com
www.bing.com.cn (Owned by Microsoft)
(Ironically, all the above (except Yahoo!) listed search engines layout and interface are pretty much like the one of Google.)
Some emaketing companies in PRC provide search engine optimization (SEO) scheme for their clients to the above named websites, with pay per click functions (similar to the Google Adwords).