Baidu's revenue up 175%
Baidu, China's leading web search company, reported a 174.9 per cent year-on-year rise in revenues for its most recent quarter.
The search firm holds close to half of the Chinese search market, according to analysts, and generated $24m in the quarter to 31 June.
The revenue figures represented a 41.3 per cent increase over the previous quarter. Baidu's net income also rose 65.9 per cent from the previous quarter, to $7.3m.
However, the total revenue shared by players in China's nascent online market remains tiny compared to the billions generated by firms like Google in more mature international markets.
Baidu has doubled research spending and significantly expanded its sales staff over the past year, and both moves have helped to improve revenues, according to executives.
The company has attempted to increase traffic recently with new community-driven services that mimic popular international sites like MySpace and Wikipedia.
"Our active customer base grew significantly in the second quarter due to expansion of our salesforce and increased awareness of Baidu's pay-for-performance services," said Shawn Wang, Baidu's chief financial officer.
"In addition to customer base expansion, further optimisation in our monetisation algorithm also contributed to strong revenue growth."
The company currently expects the current rapid rate of growth to continue, with a rise in revenues to between $30m and $31m in the next quarter, according to a press statement.
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