Sohu, Tencent Push Olympic Content

Sohu added new Olympic features to its portal on Friday. Just under the Sogou search bar centered on Sohu's homepage, Sohu has inserted a bar with scrolling Olympic news headlines, a countdown to the opening of the games, and links to other Olympic channel (2008.sohu.com) content including photos and event schedules and introductions. The updated homepage also includes a small section for information on Chinese athletes, while Sohu's real estate, finance and IT channels contain new content inserts integrating the aforementioned Olympic content with interviews of Olympic medalists.

Tencent search engine Soso.com has adopted a new athletic logo and officially released its Olympics channel at 2008.soso.com on July 29. The new channel lists Olympic news, question and answers, and statistics on Olympic medals and athletes. Search results for Olympic venues are topped off with a three-tab section for venue introduction, related news and real-time traffic maps. The traffic maps highlight roads with green, yellow and red lines to indicate travel conditions.

Baidu added Olympic content to its news and popular search list (top.baidu.com) channels on August 1. The news platform now includes an Olympic tab that integrates news highlights and commentary, while the lists channel has added an Olympics section that offers top ten search keyword rankings for Olympic phrases, songs and athletes.

Lisa