Chinese search engine giant, Baidu, has reported a 95% surge in profits over the last quarter.

The company said it made 1.63bn yuan (£155m) in the second quarter, compared to its profit of 837m yuan in the same period last year.

Baidu’s success rides on the back of the fact that it’s the number one search engine in China, beating Google with its mammoth 75% market share.

But what’s its secret? Well, it’s not a great secret at all, it would seem. ‘We benefited from strong traffic growth and improved monetisation,’ said Robin Li, chairman and chief executive officer of Baidu.

And it’s this traffic growth that is the most interesting point. Chinese use has experienced massive growth online (increasing by 1,277% in the last 10 years) and is now the second-most popular language on the internet, with an estimated 445million users.

We reckon it won’t be long before it closes the gap on English-speaking users (536million) and it takes the crown of the most spoken language online.

So it’s more important than ever that businesses take advantage of this golden opportunity by trading on the foreign language internet, particularly those who want to break into Asia. After all, if you don’t speak their language, there’s little chance they’re going to find you online.

For Baidu, however, their online presence remains stronger than ever, and looks to go from strength to strength. And profitability is a language we can all speak!

tags: Baidu, Foreign Language Internet, foreign search engines, Google, internet statistics