On April 9, 2009, Baidu launched “Search for the Elderly”. Robin Li, chairman and CEO of Baidu, said, "The more we face an economic crisis, the more companies must be responsible and do charity. As the world's largest Chinese search engine, Baidu has the responsibility and ability to use its own technology. , experience and other resource advantages, we can do practical things for the elderly and fulfill our responsibilities to make their later life more colorful.”
According to statistics from the China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC), in recent years, China's Internet has gradually shown a trend of penetrating into older age groups. As of the end of 2008, people aged 50 and above accounted for 5.7% of the total Internet users in China. The absolute number increased from 10 million in 2007 to 17 million in 2008, a growth rate of 70%. Much higher than the overall growth rate of Internet users.
Among people aged 50 and above, search engines are one of the two most commonly used Internet applications (among the Internet applications used by the elderly, the top two are online news and search engines, with usage rates of 86.3% respectively) and 57.6%). Among the overall Internet users, the usage rate of search engines can only rank fourth.
From this perspective, Baidu’s launch of senior search can be said to be “just in time”. But to launch it at this time, a high-sounding reason must be given for "just the right time", so that the "public welfare theory in times of crisis" will grandly surface. In fact, this "crisis period", I think it may be more appropriate to regard it as Baidu's "crisis".
Take a look at the specific features of the product. Since it is an elderly search, it must reflect the characteristics related to the elderly. Let’s take a look at the performance of Baidu’s elderly search. Formal things such as large fonts have been introduced in some articles and will not be repeated. Let me focus on one of my trial experiences.
The author used "leg pain" as the keyword to search in the elderly search. The following picture is the search result:
According to ordinary thinking, since it is an elderly search, the search results should be related to the elderly. However, among the 10 search results on the first page, the first one comes from "Baidu Knows" and is about a 16-year-old little sister "growing up" "Pain" post; the second post is also a page about growing pains; the third post is directly a product supply and demand information. There are only two pieces of information really related to "leg pain" in the elderly, ranking sixth and eighth respectively. Such a result is, frankly, unsatisfactory.
The author is doing statistical surveys, and I know that this kind of single-sample test cannot reflect the whole, but it at least shows that there is room for improvement in this product. After PR, we look forward to improving product quality.
Let’s just listen to Robin Li’s theory of public welfare and don’t take it seriously. And I believe Robin Li will not take it seriously, but I hope he will take the quality of this product seriously.
Finally, I must say one thing: For a product like "Senior Search", I still have to give my applause anyway, even though it is still not satisfactory in terms of truly meeting the needs of the elderly. After all, on the Internet, where young people are the absolute mainstream, some people are beginning to pay attention to non-mainstream groups.