Baidu Inc, the Nasdaq-listed Chinese Internet search leader, said yesterday its net income for the third quarter surged 91.4 percent to 347.9 million yuan (US$54.2 million) from a year earlier.

Revenues in the year's third quarter hiked to 919.1 million yuan, representing an 85-percent increase from the corresponding period last year.

Quarterly online marketing revenues were 918.2 million yuan, representing an 85-percent increase from the third quarter of last year, which was mainly driven by increases in the number of active online marketing customers and revenue per customer.

Baidu had more than 194,000 active online marketing customers in the third quarter of this year, representing a sequential increase of 7.2 percent and an increase of 35.7 percent from a year earlier.

Jennifer Li, Baidu's chief financial officer, said the impact of the 2008 Beijing Olympics on Baidu's business was in line with projections.

Baidu accounted for 73.2 percent of the search request market share on the Chinese mainland in the third quarter of 2008, down 1 percentage point from the previous quarter, according to the consulting firm iResearch Inc. Google was in second place with a 20.8-percent market share.

"Companies throughout China are increasingly recognizing the value of Baidu's paid search as an effective marketing tool and we remain confident in our long-term growth potential," said Robin Li, Baidu's chairman and chief executive officer.

Baidu was also testing the market to move more aggressively into C2C, Li said.

(ShanghaI Daily October 24, 2008)