They’re all reborn, what’s wrong with being a little more almighty?

Chapter 234 Ripening
Zhang Wei didn't say anything and Yao Xiaoguang didn't dare to disturb him. He just looked at him quietly.

After a while, Zhang Wei finally sighed and said, "I'm sure you are familiar with the website hao123, right?"

"You mean that navigation website? I remember that it was acquired by Baidu two years ago. Are you planning to promote it through this navigation website?"

Zhang Wei nodded. "For URL navigation sites, the more rogue they are, the larger their user base will be. Hao123 should have the largest user base, so we can promote through it. When promoting, we will focus on free games, and the slogan will be to bring Diao Chan home."

"I have never used URL navigation to place advertisements before, so I'm not sure what the effect will be," Yao Xiaoguang said.

Zhang Wei directly opened the browser on his computer, and the hao123 interface appeared on it.

"Look, the most prominent part of this webpage is the famous website navigation. The red words in the famous website navigation should be advertising links. We definitely need them here. Just write "Bring Diao Chan home."

If you look at the following, you will see the navigation of the classified websites. In the category of games, there are 17173, Sina Games, Pacific Games, etc. We also need an ad space at this location, so we write "free games".

In the era without 360 antivirus, URL navigation websites were basically rogue software. As long as you logged in once, they would forcibly bind to your browser homepage. You couldn't change it by right-clicking the browser icon and clicking on the line to modify the homepage.

Although URL navigation is a rogue method, it does make it convenient for netizens to surf the Internet. At least when netizens log into major portals, they no longer need to enter URLs one by one. They just need to click on the links on the URL navigation.

At the same time, website navigation is also the best way to promote web games. Even the various website navigations now are full of links to various web games. In particular, advertisements for various versions of "Legend" almost occupy half of the market.

hao123 is probably the most notorious rogue software in URL navigation. Even today, many computer homepages are hijacked and locked by hao123. There are also various tutorials on the Internet to teach you how to solve the hijacking of hao123.

Twenty years ago, ordinary people had no way to deal with the hijacking of hao123. Even paid antivirus software such as Rising Antivirus and Kaspersky was useless.

Until the emergence of 360 Antivirus, it was really effective and directly changed your homepage from hao123 to 360 Navigation.

So at that time, advertising web games on hao123 was almost equivalent to forcing netizens who browsed the web to watch the ads.

"Free games" will definitely attract netizens who are looking for a bargain; and "bring Diao Chan home" will definitely attract a group of old perverts.

After talking about the promotion on hao123, Zhang Wei sighed and continued reluctantly, "Also, do you have any acquaintances in Baidu?"

"Although hao123 was acquired by Baidu, it should be an independent department. Do we need to contact Baidu if we want to advertise with hao123?" Yao Xiaoguang asked puzzledly.

"We approached Baidu not to promote on hao123, but to use Baidu to promote our games," Zhang Wei replied.

"Baidu promotion?" Yao Xiaoguang frowned. "That thing is not very effective, and I heard that it is only used by large companies. Isn't it a bit of a waste to use Baidu promotion to promote our game?"

"I'm not talking about ordinary Baidu promotion, but keyword promotion." Zhang Wei said in a somewhat low voice.

"Keyword promotion? Baidu has this service? I haven't heard of it!"

"Not yet, but we need it now." Zhang Wei sighed again and continued, "This is a ferocious beast!"

……

The beast that Zhang Wei was considering whether to release was keyword promotion.

For search engines, the earliest profit model was to accept advertising, but it was difficult to maintain the normal operation of the search engine relying solely on advertising fees. In order to make profits, companies came up with the idea of ​​paid ranking.

You can tell what paid ranking is just by looking at the name. The more money you pay, the higher your ranking will be when users search.

This thing was first developed by Yahoo in the 2001s. Later, Google also started using it. In September 9, Baidu also started the paid ranking business. It can be said that this is a standard feature of search engine profitability.

Early bidding rankings were similar to advertising. Customers paid an advertising fee and their ranking would be moved forward.

Later, a pay-per-click model emerged. Promotional information appeared in the search results. If it was clicked by the user, the search engine would charge a promotion fee. If it was not clicked by the user, no promotion fee would be charged.

Baidu's business at the time was called Baidu Promotion. In 2006, Baidu Promotion was mainly used by large enterprises.

For small businesses, the cost of attracting traffic through Baidu promotion is too high, and the traffic-attracting effect is not good, which is somewhat not cost-effective.

The reason why the traffic generation effect was not good was that Baidu had not yet launched the keyword bidding ranking business at that time.

In the absence of keyword bidding, users must search for this thing before the bidding ranking can take effect.

For example, if you search for Liuwei Dihuang Wan, the search engine will show you information related to Liuwei Dihuang Wan. In other words, Baidu will not randomly push information to you based on what you search for.

Because in Baidu's search structure, "Liuwei Dihuang Pills" is just a noun, not a keyword. When a customer searches for a noun, the system will display information related to the noun according to the system settings.

But if you are selling Bawei Dihuang Wan, and you buy a paid ranking, then only when users search for Bawei Dihuang Wan can your bid put you at the top. If users search for Liuwei Dihuang Wan, you will not be found.

How can Bawei Dihuang Wan be as famous as Liuwei Dihuang Wan! Therefore, there are fewer users searching for Bawei Dihuang Wan. If users do not search for Bawei Dihuang Wan, the bidding ranking of Bawei Dihuang Wan will not be triggered.

This mechanism obviously benefits large enterprises and big brands, but is not conducive to the promotion of small enterprises and small brands.

Large companies and big brands are already well-known. When ordinary people search, they will definitely give priority to those with high popularity. As for those with low popularity, no one will search for them and naturally there will be no traffic.

But in 2009, Baidu launched the Phoenix Nest Project, and keyword bidding has been around since then.

With keyword bidding, when you search for "Liuwei Dihuang Pills" again, it is no longer a noun, but will trigger a keyword.

If Bawei Dihuang Pills also buys bids for the keywords "Liuwei Dihuang Pills", then when users search for "Liuwei Dihuang Pills", the information that will appear at the top will not be related to Liuwei Dihuang Pills, but your Bawei Dihuang Pills.

With such a search mechanism, small businesses and small brands can take advantage of the popularity of large companies and big brands as long as they are willing to spend money on keyword bidding. Users are clearly searching for big brands, but the products ranked at the top are all kinds of miscellaneous brands.

The medical advertising incident that caused a lot of controversy in later generations originated from this keyword bidding mechanism.

Private hospitals in the Putian system have bought various keywords, such as the names of various diseases and the names of major hospitals.

If you search for "kidney deficiency" on Baidu, the first few pages will be filled with advertisements for Putian-affiliated hospitals that treat kidney deficiency; if you search for "Union Hospital", the first listings are not the official website of Union Hospital, but various Putian-affiliated private hospitals.

When medical advertising was most rampant, those Putian-affiliated hospitals would even send people to keep an eye on Baidu’s keyword bidding system. As soon as their rankings dropped, they would immediately add money to ensure that their position would be at the top of the searches.

There is no doubt that this keyword search is a disaster for search engines. Not only will it destroy the ecology of the entire industry, but it will also harm people.

So Zhang Wei didn't want to release this beast so early.

But then he thought again, even if he didn't release the beast, it would still come out of the cage three years later and harm people. Zhang Wei alone couldn't stop it, the state had to take action to regulate it.

It's like having a boil on your body. You just need to wait until the boil matures, pop it, and squeeze out the pus. If you ripen it quickly, it will heal faster.

Therefore, many ointments on the market for treating boils actually ripen them faster rather than making them disappear.

Zhang Wei felt that since he couldn't stop it, he might as well act as the ripening drug and come up with the keyword bidding trick earlier, so that the problem would erupt earlier and he could solve the problem earlier.

……

In Baidu's promotion department, Director Chen was concentrating on making a PPT.

A subordinate knocked on the door and said, "Director, two clients came outside and said they want to see you."

"What client?" Director Chen was still concentrating on the work at hand, without even looking up. "It's a gaming company called Weiguang Technology. They just made a Three Kingdoms-style game and want to buy our paid ranking, but they are not satisfied with our proposal, so they want to meet with you." The subordinate replied.

"The one making the game? What's the name of the person in charge?" Director Chen asked.

"One is called Yao Xiaoguang, he's about 27 or 28 years old, and the other is called Zhang Wei, he looks to be in his early twenties, like a college student. These are their business cards." The subordinate handed over the two men's business cards.

"Yao Xiaoguang? I seem to have some impression of this person. I remember he was a game planner for Shanda." Director Chen said as he took the business card.

At the beginning of the 21st century, the Chinese Internet circle was not large. Even if the directors of several major Internet companies did not know each other, they had heard of each other's names.

At that time, Shanda was a leading company in the gaming industry, and the name Yao Xiaoguang was also well-known in the Internet circle.

Since they are colleagues and clients, it would be inappropriate not to meet them, so Director Chen nodded and said, "Then please ask Mr. Yao and the others to come over! And go get two more cups of tea."

After a while, Zhang Wei and Yao Xiaoguang were invited in.

"Mr. Yao, I've long heard of your name!" Director Chen knew who was Yao Xiaoguang just by looking at their ages.

"Hello, Director Chen, I'm Yao Xiaoguang, and this is Mr. Zhang from Weiguang Technology." Yao Xiaoguang introduced Zhang Wei next to him.

"Mr. Zhang looks so young! He is really promising at a young age! To be honest, if Mr. Yao hadn't introduced you, I would have thought you were still a college student!" Director Chen said with a smile.

"Director Chen, you have a really good eye for people. Actually, I'm just a college student," Zhang Wei replied.

"So you started your business while you were still in college! That's amazing!" Director Chen praised, and then asked, "Which university did Mr. Zhang attend?"

"Tsinghua University." Zhang Wei said.

"So you are my junior from Tsinghua University! I graduated from Peking University, so we are a family!" Director Chen said, inviting the two to sit down.

After a few pleasantries, the conversation finally got to the point.

"Mr. Yao, Mr. Zhang, I heard that you are not very satisfied with our promotion plan. Do you have any special requirements for the promotion of your products?" Director Chen asked.

"Director Chen, we have looked at Baidu's current promotion model. To be honest, I don't think it is very effective for small brands and small businesses like ours." Zhang Wei said.

"The effects of search promotion are definitely mixed. Large companies have high brand awareness, so the promotion effect will definitely be better. But this is also reasonable. It is unrealistic to say that the same search promotion will have the same effect on Adidas and Nike and Old Beijing cloth shoes, right?" Director Chen explained.

"Director Chen, I understand what you said, so we came to you to find out if Baidu has any special promotion services that would be more beneficial to a small business like ours and would help us better showcase our strengths to users."

"Well..." Director Chen hesitated for a moment, then said, "As for the method, we at Baidu now have a search ranking list. If you are willing to increase your investment, you can put your game at the top of the list."

"The salesperson outside has also mentioned this method. If we think it is appropriate, we would not come to you." Zhang Wei said with a smile.

"As for the rest, we can only increase the advertising traffic. But the cost will be relatively high. To be honest, I think it is not very cost-effective unless it is a top-tier popular game." Director Chen spoke sincerely, as if he was thinking about the customers.

Zhang Wei said, "Since Director Chen also thinks that increasing advertising traffic is not cost-effective, how about I come up with a plan?"

I guess this is a customized one! That would cost extra.

If you don't make money, you're a cuckold, so Director Chen immediately said, "Go ahead."

"I wonder if Director Chen has heard of keyword bidding?"

"Keywords?" Director Chen pondered for a few seconds, then asked, "Are you talking about the search keywords?"

Zhang Wei winked at Yao Xiaoguang, who took out a plan from his bag and handed it to Director Chen.

"Director Chen, please take a look. This is the plan we came up with."

The plan was submitted by Yao Xiaoguang, and Director Chen did not dare to neglect it. After all, Yao Xiaoguang was also a well-known game planner in the Internet circle, and he might be able to bring something new.

Director Chen opened the plan, read it carefully, and quickly understood the connotation of keyword bidding.

"Oh my god, they actually came up with something like this! If this is really introduced into search engines, the entire industry will be transformed!"

……

In the president's office, Mr. Li looked very high-spirited at this moment.

Four months ago, Baidu was successfully listed on NASDAQ. In view of China's huge population and rapidly growing market, Baidu immediately became the darling of the capital market. The issue price of Baidu stock was US$27, and it surged to more than US$150 on the first day of listing.

Through financing in the U.S. stock market, Baidu has sufficient ammunition and is now working hard to expand its business.

"Mr. Li, Director Chen from the Promotion Department is here!" The secretary's voice rang out.

"Please come in, Director Chen!" Mr. Li said immediately.

The Promotion Department is the department in Baidu that is responsible for making money and is the boss's favorite. Director Chen doesn't even need to make an appointment if he wants to meet General Manager Li.

After Director Chen came in, he didn't say any polite words, but got straight to the point and said, "Mr. Li, here is a plan for exploring a new profit model for search promotion. Please take a look."

When he heard about the new profit model, Mr. Li immediately became excited. Internet companies are not afraid of new models, but they are afraid of having no model.

Mr. Li read the plan carefully, and the description of keyword bidding instantly attracted him. With his many years of experience in the search industry, he immediately realized that this keyword bidding could bring huge profits and would also subvert the entire search industry!

"This is a great idea! With this keyword bidding, many small businesses and small brands will benefit from it, and then a large number of small businesses will become our search promotion customers! Our revenue will also increase significantly!"

Mr. Li looked excited and asked, "How did you come up with this idea? You can give this new model a try. If the effect is good, promote it on a large scale! By then, your promotion department will definitely get a bonus!"

"Thank you, Mr. Li. Actually, this idea was not thought of by me, but by one of our clients." Director Chen continued, "This client is called Yao Xiaoguang, and he used to be a game planner for Shanda."

"So you're also in the Internet business! Yao Xiaoguang is a talented person who can think of this model. It would be a waste of his talent to be a game planner. Is it possible to invite him to come here?" Mr. Li had the idea of ​​poaching him.

"It's unlikely. Yao Xiaoguang is starting his own business. He opened his own company called Weiguang Technology. This time he approached us to promote their newly developed game."

"That's such a pity." Mr. Li sighed slightly.

Director Chen then reported: "In fact, Weiguang Technology also has a request. They hope that if keyword bidding is implemented, they will be given a few more keywords."

"That's fine. As long as their requests are reasonable, try to meet them! Also, you can give them a discount price and make friends with them.

A game company can actually have such a mindset. This game company must have great potential! Maybe we will have more opportunities for cooperation in the future.”

Mr. Li continued to look at the plan in his hand as he spoke, with an expression as if he had found a treasure.

Since others have offered their treasures to you, you should give them something in return. It’s just a matter of reciprocity!

(End of this chapter)