Baidu’s Hao123.com is China’s largest Chinese web directory / navigational site.
What is Hao123.com?
Hao123.com was launched in 1999 and was acquired by Chinese search engine Baidu.com in 2004.
For Chinese internet users, Hao123 is an Internet “start page” that shows paid and non-paid links on the home page and category pages. Hao123′s homepage consists of over 200 outbound links that are pointing to other popular Chinese websites. Categorized pages consist of outbound links to websites with specific topics including:
- Weather:
www.hao123.com/tianqi.htm - Maps:
www.hao123.com/jiatong.htm - Shopping:
www.hao123.com/netbuy.htm - Stock market:
www.hao123.com/stock.htm - Properties:
www.hao123.com/hbzs.htm - Automobiles:
www.hao123.com/car.htm - Health:
www.hao123.com/ylbj.htm - Jobs:
www.hao123.com/rencai.htm - Travel:
www.hao123.com/liyou.htm
My Hao123 Personalized Page
To improve users’ experience, Hao123.com offers this “wide screen” version of the directory site and personalized homepage, My Hao123 which is similar to iGoogle. To use My Hao123, sign up for a Baidu login. You can select your background image and add up to 10 customized URLs which will appear on your personal My Hao123 page:
Submit Sites to Hao123.com
An alternative to advertising on Baidu through Baidu PPC Phoenix Nest is to submit your sites to Hao123′s directory listings.
Baidu has an editorial team ensuring the listing quality and managing site submissions to Hao123.com, so depending on the quality and popularity of your sites in China, you websites may or may not be included.
Inclusion may be difficult for Chinese sites that do not already have high traffic volume or are not yet big brand names. Alternatively, submit your site to Baidu to receive organic search engine traffic.
Hao123′s Legitimacy
Hao123 is one of Baidu’s largest search traffic providers and has the highest web traffic among all the Chinese web directory sites. This caused Chinese webmasters to create fake Hao123 sites, including:
www.hao123.cn
www.hao123.com.cn
www.hao123.net.cn
www.hao123.cc
However, Baidu officially announced that besides www.hao123.com, below are also legitimate Hao123 domains:
www.hao123.net
www.hao222.com
www.hao222.net