China’s major player in the search engine market is known as Baidu. Of course most of the instructions are written in Chinese so it is not easy for a western visitor to use advanced search commands without the help of a quick reference cheat sheet. For starters, Baidu has a web page off of its main portal to do advanced searches. However, the problem for westerners is that it is all in Chinese with no button for switching to another language like English. To reach the advanced search page, go to the URL: http://www.baidu.com/gaoji/advanced.html
The best way to use the advanced search features is to translate the fields. This can be accomplished by using a web translation portal such as Yahoo’s Babel Fish. Just enter the link to the advanced page in the web page translation field. For the source and target languages, choose “simple Chinese to English.” While the translation is not exactly correct, it is close enough for an English-speaking visitor to make use of. The following table lists the fields on the advanced search page and their functionality. Some of these advanced search functions can also be accessed from the main Baidu search page and the second column in the table lists an example of how to invoke it. Note that the field label is the translation returned by Babel Fish and does not reflect correct English grammar in each case.
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Search Result (field 1): Below contains the complete key word |
Spanish lessons |
Each result in the SERP (Search Engine Results Page) will contain all of the keywords listed |
Search Result (field 2): Contains the following complete key word |
“Spanish lessons” |
Each result in the SERP will contain any of the keywords listed |
Search Result (field 3): Below contains the random key word |
Spanish | lessons |
This command uses the OR operator | to instruct the search engine to return results with any of the keywords listed |
Search Result (field 4): Not including the following key word |
Spanish -(institutes grammar) |
This command excludes the keywords listed in the field.
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Demonstration strip number: Choice search result demonstration strip number |
N/A |
This is a dropdown menu where you have the choice to list 10, 20, 50, or 100 results per SERP. |
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N/A |
This dropdown menu allows you to select the aging of the results. You can select all pages, pages one day old, pages one week old, pages since January (current year), or pages one year old. The dropdown lists also lists the choices in this same order for those who do not understand Chinese. |
Language: The search homepage language is |
N/A |
This is a selector where you can choose the language of the pages being searched. The first selector is “All languages”, the next is “Simple Chinese”, and the last is “Traditional Chinese.” |
Document format: The search homepage form is |
filetype:pdf Spanish Lessons |
This is much like the filetype search command in other search engines. Choices in the dropdown menu are:
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Site: (Spanish Lessons) title: (Spanish Lessons)
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This is a selector where you can choose the location in which to search for the key word(s). The first choice specifies to search the entire site, the second in the title, and the last for the URL. |
In the station searches: The definition must search the website which assigns is |
site:(cnn.com) Thailand |
Search for the keyword within the domain entered into this field. |
Tags: Advaced Search, Baidu, Baidu Help
