Google's loss is Baidu's gain in 3Q

Chinese search engine Baidu more than doubled its 3Q profit, as it picked up users from Google after the US firm’s high-profile spat with the Chinese government.
 
Profit grew 112.4% to 1.047 billion yuan (€112 million), from 76.4% higher revenue of 2.26 billion yuan.
 
Baidu's advertiser customers increased 25.9% to 272,000, and the amount each advertiser spent grew 40.7% from 3Q09 to 8,300 yuan.
 
Advertising and marketing expenses increased 49.8% to 296.2 million yuan, while R&D spend grew 75.4% to 204.7 million yuan.
 
Traffic acquisition costs fell to 8.9% of revenues from 15.3% due to faster organic growth, according to CFO Jennifer Li.
 
“We are pleased to have delivered record margins in the third quarter, even as we actively invested in sales and marketing, R&D and network equipment,” Li said.
 
Baidu beat analyst forecasts on profit and revenue, according to a Reuters poll.
 
 
Two separate analyst firms this week released data showing that Baidu's share of Chinese search grew to a record 72.9% in the quarter.
 
Google's share dropped 2.7 percentage points to 24.6% and is down from over 30% a year ago.
 
Google services were partly blocked in China in July, after it stopped censoring search results from mainland China.
 
The company had started redirecting mainland searches through its uncensored Hong Kong landing page, but later compromised by only including a link to google.com.hk on the mainland search page.