Kassey Lee looks at the latest data on web navigation in China.
Now that we are in 2020, it’s time to update the time-series analysis of web traffic data in China and see the impact on demand for domains.
I wrote the article “Direct visits driving demand for domains in China” in October last year to analyze how visitors arrive at a website, using my years of data collected from Baidu. What I found is that “direct visit accounts for the largest share of web traffic in China.”
Now I want to add the 2019 data to the analysis. Unfortunately, Baidu has changed the format of data, making direct comparison with past data difficult. In the past, yearly numbers were available but now only monthly figures are provided. I solved the problem by averaging the monthly figures to arrive at the yearly numbers.
Another issue is the classification. In the past, Direct Visit, Referral, Search Engine, Directory, Social media were used. Now, only Direct Visit, Referral, and Search Engine are kept, with the addition of a new category. (The Chinese term is 站内来源 but I could not find its equivalent in English. So, I translated it as “Insite Visit”, which measures visitors who become active again after being idle for more than 30 minutes.)
Below is the updated version of web traffic in China.
While direct comparison is no longer possible, at least we can see that direct visit is still the main method visitors use to arrive at a website. In other words, Chinese consumers remember and specify domains in a browser to visit websites. This implies that demand for easy-to-remember domains will continue to increase.
You can find the Baidu web traffic data here.
Alan Built says
Good to know this trend.
Kassey Lee says
Thanks Alan. Glad you find it useful.
patrick cowan says
what is a good site to market chinese specific domains.
Kassey Lee says
See if the following articles help. I have sold some domains to China via Afternic Fast Transfer.
https://domainnamewire.com/2020/01/13/how-to-sell-domains-to-china/
https://domainnamewire.com/2020/01/23/how-much-are-domain-names-selling-for-in-china/
https://domainnamewire.com/2020/01/15/top-10-registrars-in-china/