Baidu's profits flat on marketing costs

China's search engine giant Baidu.com has been tracking the mass movement of people for the Spring Festival, the Lunar New Year, since Jan 26. The interactive map, which is updated hourly, has been logging the locations in which data requests were made to its maps service. Hundreds of thousands of apps users have used its location technologies.The thicker, brighter lines are the busiest routes.

BEIJING - China's largest search engine, Baidu Inc, said Thursday that its net profits slid 0.4 percent year-on-yearin the fourth quarter of last year to 2.78 billion yuan ($460 million).

The slight drop was mainly due to climbing marketing costs, especially for its mobile products.

The company's expenditures in sales, general business and administration surged 135.1 percent year-on-yearto 1.86 billion yuan in the final quarter, according to an unaudited business statement.

Its revenue surged 50.3 percent from a year earlier to 9.52 billion yuan in the final quarter, indicating healthy growth.

Li Yanhong, the company's chief executive, said the company has made remarkable progress in the mobile business and established a leading position in the mobile market, including in search, mobile application distribution and location-based services.

In the fourth quarter, mobile business accounted for more than 20 percent of Baidu's revenue, Li said.

In 2013, the company's total profits edged up 0.6 percent to 10.52 billion yuan, and its total revenues soared 43.2 percent to 31.94 billion yuan.

The top 10 cities with the largest influxes of travelers at 10 am in Jan 28, 2014: Beijing, Chongqing, Hengyang, Yulin, Ganzhou, Xinyang, Shangqiu, Binzhou, and Tianjin.[Photo/Baidu]