Baidu’s share of searches in China increased 6% from Q4 to Q1. Google redirecting visitors from mainland China to their Hong Kong site doesn’t seem a likely factor for this growth, given that Google’s change didn’t happen until March 22nd. It looks more like the increasing number of Chinese internet users is responsible. The share of Chinese citizens regularly accessing the internet was less than 30% in 2009. Internet penetration is increasing a lot faster in China than in the US, where penetration is now above 75%.

Employees at Razorfish’s offices in Beijing and Shanghai report that Google users are loyal, citing the accuracy and relevance Google is trusted to provide. Also, Google is necessary for searching for English-language pages in China.  Baidu results are only available in Chinese. Google will have a significant market in China until Baidu makes a big strategy shift.

Baidu’s strategy is to increase query share by concentrating on new users, rather than stealing from Google. Baidu also hopes to capture more of the mobile search share in China. This week, executives from Baidu explained their ambition to achieve the same query share from mobile as they have on PCs. With less than 1% of their sales teams dedicated to international business, it’s clear Baidu is not looking to the West.

This week’s Search Celebrity Sighting is of Razorfish Senior Search Account Manager Joe DeVita. Joe was only mistaken for a search celebrity, but he’s a bigshot in our book, and by going all the way to China to get caught on camera witnessing the biggest search story of 2010 so far, he’s earned a place in the SEM Hall of Fame. Here’s Joe’s first-person account of what it’s like to be Big in Beijing.

I was in China last week to meet with Google’s China COO, Yuri Narciss. I met with Yuri the day Google.cn was redirected to Google.com.hk. It was a top news story in China.  When my cab pulled up to Google’s Beijing office, 30 reporters rushed over to take my picture. One guy held my cab’s door shut with his foot so he could get a shot of me in the car.  The papers ran stories about “unidentified foreign visitors” — that was me. The TV news showed me walking out of Google’s office that night (0:40).

Yuri and I planned to talk about Chinese consumer behavior and Google’s Chinese position, but the news of the day was more interesting. Yuri explained that nothing will change for Google’s China staff as long as the government doesn’t block google.com.hk. That’s the big uncertainty bomb, still ticking. The office will stay open since most of the staff are working on research and development. They have other products like email, music and shopping that are gaining traction.

Google users in China seem to be loyal like Apple users here. The loyalists I spoke to said they won’t stop using Google just because they are being routed through the Hong Kong site.

While meeting with Razorfish teams in Beijing and Shanghai, we evaluated the Google Hong Kong experience.  Google.com.hk results used to be in traditional Chinese characters. On March 23rd the site was updated so users from the mainland could see results in simplified characters. Google figured that one out fast! I was curious about irrelevant results when searching for local information, but everyone agreed the experience with Google.com.hk was fine.

In the short term, it’s not likely Google will lose much share in China unless the Hong Kong site is blocked. Our Google and Baidu search campaigns targeting the mainland looked steady for the first week after March 23.