As search engine competition reaches China, US-based Keynote Systems is launching a study of users’ experience of the country’s leading search engines: Alibaba/Yahoo!, Baidu, Google China and Sohu/Sogou. The study will take the same form as Keynote's annual North American search studies.

Keynote will ask 1,200 consumers in major cities throughout China to use the various search engines to search for various items including products, news, images and MP3s. The company will track the success of these searches, and collect participants’ opinions about the sites.

To assess service levels, Keynote will also use its network of measurement computers to track more than 35 performance metrics and collect 6,500 data points on each site. It will use these data points to rank the sites on performance factors including responsiveness, availability, geographic uniformity, and outages. The results of the study will be announced in January 2006.

Jeff Kraatz, VP and MD of Asia Pacific for Keynote, explains the importance of the Chinese study: ‘The hundred million-plus Internet user search marketplace is extraordinarily hot, and at stake is their preferred search engine brand.’

Keynote measures web site performance with a network of measurement computers and a panel of 160,000+ consumers. The company is online at www.keynote.com.

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