Baidu (BIDU) In The Business Of Compiling Chinese Indexes

China’s biggest search engine Baidu, Inc. (NASDAQ:BIDU) has reportedly rolled out its first search interest based indexes tracking the movement of some economic indicators of China.

According to Bloomberg news on Wednesday, the indexes tracked down unemployment rate and forecast Apple’s second quarter 2016 sales (a demonstration of accuracy).

Baidu’s search technology is taking into account user positions, location requests and Wi-Fi hotspot logins to track down consumer behavior and extract economic trends.

The company stated that it will release consumer and employment indexes from this month. More granular level data will be rolled out from next month including industry and company specific data, useful mainly to hedge funds, managers and investors. Charges will be per the volume of data requested.

Wu Haishan, a senior data scientist at Baidu, sounded upbeat about the company’s capabilities in the space. He stated that Baidu’s technology system has a competitive edge over other Chinese Internet giants when it comes to the accuracy of its forecasts.

It appears that the privately compiled index market in China is gaining traction as market watchers are relying more on these indexes than those compiled by the government. E-commerce giant and local player Alibaba Group Holding Limited (NYSE:BABA) and payments network UnionPay are older players in this space.

However, it seems that the Chinese government is keeping a close eye on these private index compilers. Recently, China Minsheng Banking Corp. compiled a purchasing managers’ index, which was suspended for unexplained reasons.

At present, Baidu has a Zacks Rank #5 (Strong Sell). Some better-ranked stocks in the wider technology sector include Blucora, Inc. (NASDAQ:BCOR) and Internet Initiative Japan Inc. (NASDAQ:IIJI) , each carrying a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy).