Online search sees Baidu profits soar

China - Strong demand for online advertising has seen China's largest online search portal Baidu more than double its third quarter profits, with online marketing revenues up 108.8% on the third quarter of 2006.

Despite mounting competition from search heavyweights Google and Yahoo!, Baidu continued to dominate the paid search market in China and increase its customer base.

Baidu said the number of active online marketing customers grew to around 143,000, an increase of 11.6% from the previous quarter. Revenue for each online marketing customer reached approximately RMB3,500, representing an increase of 11%.

Robin Li, Baidu's chairman and chief executive officer, said while the company would continue to focus on its core search offering, a raft of new products and services will roll out over the next quarter.

"Our results reflect the scalability of our pay for performance (P4P) business model and demonstrate our growing reputation as the Chinese language search provider of choice."

"We also saw strong uptake of our community-based products and entertainment platforms, which we continued to enhance and expand over the third quarter to serve the evolving needs of our users.