Baidu expects 77% revenue surge due to Google’s market share shrink

China’s most popular online search engine, predicts sales increase that even exceeds analysts’ estimations. Baidu is positive in its forecasts as Google lost market share amid a censorship dispute with Chinese regulators.

As announced Baidu CEO Robin Li, the company has been gaining traffic share dramatically. The Chinese search engine forecasts Q3 revenue to rise by 77% to 2.26 billion yuan ($333 million) as it gained a record number of customers in the previous three months.

As Li unveiled he expects to invite more advertisers after offering a system that facilitates the sale of online-search keywords in China, the world’s biggest online market.

Important to note, Baidu’s second-quarter profit more than doubled, partly because Google shut its China-based search site in March and redirected users offshore to avoid censorship rules.

Baidu thus gained 33,000 new clients in the second quarter after a nationwide marketing program, reaching the volume of 250,000 customers in total.

Profit for the three months ending June 30 rose to 837.4 million yuan, or 2.40 yuan per American depositary receipt, from 383.3 million yuan, or 1.10 yuan per ADR, a year earlier, as Baidu reported. That exceeded the 710.4 million yuan average of analysts’ estimates compiled by Bloomberg.