With Google’s sudden announcement in January about the possibility of stopping its operations here to the time that it forwarded all of its China (.cn) domain traffic to its Hong Kong website in late March, it has definitely been a rollercoaster ride in terms trying to keep up with all of the intrigue and also to find out what the fall out might be from the exodus of such a major player in the Internet world.

China Polling’s tracking research on China search engine branding and usage has revealed some interesting reaction to Google’s move, all from a brand preference perspective but also in terms of brand satisfaction.

We have tracked the above with our search engine usage panel before the January 13th Google blog announcement by its chief legal consul to just before the transfer of its China traffic to Hong Kong. We then looked at the traffic to date and it seems that Google has a very solid following here with Chinese Internet users.

Powered by China Polling Real Time Stats, June 2010

We are seeing a dip in preference for Google, especially during the stormy days between the initial announcement and the eventual closing of its China (.cn) domain. This drop in preference can be attributed to the immense publicity that the Google event has generated here and it also shows that it’s not all positive. However, the preference level has come up a point right after the announcement to forward the Chinese domain which means that Chinese Internet users are still using Google and are forgetting about the whole incident.

The real gain that’s being made in this whole episode is of course Baidu with its favorability going up all the way, but actually taking shares away from the lesser known search engines here. This makes a lot of sense in that the free publicity generated from the Google event is helping to bring in more users for Baidu.

Powered by China Polling Real Time Stats, June 2010

One of the key matrixes that we have been tracking is the user satisfaction for each of the search engines. There is a surprise here with literally no change before, during or after the exodus for the Google devotees. However, we are seeing a very sharp drop in the user satisfaction for Baidu, this validates the fact that a lot more users are trying out the market leader but do not like the user experience, which we’ve already heard a lot of grumblings about.

The fact that Google user satisfaction has stayed the same is testament to the fact that Google users are still using Google and getting the type of results that they need from the Hong Kong site but also from Google.com which is still available in China.

Powered by China Polling Real Time Stats, June 2010

Note: Full survey results are available in .PDF by clicking on the following link: China Search Engine Brand Tracking

Number of Samples: 1515
Before Jan. 13th: 693
Jan. 13th – Mar. 23rd: 450
Mar. 24th – Present: 369
Data Capture Period: 2009.6.29 – 2010.6.11
China Polling conducts a series of Omnibus Surveys on an ongoing basis to provide continuous tracking of consumer trends in China. This tracking of consumer behavior allows for the most up to date information about what’s hot and what’s not here in China. The average 20 question survey for this Search Engine Omnibus answers some very basic questions for this very competitive market. All real-time datasets are available to purchase online. Additional questions can be added into the Omnibus Survey and fielded at any time. For more information please contact Allan Chou at allan@chinapollng.com.