Building a Better Chinese Auction Site

Ebay China and rival Taobao.com have been battling for the dominant position in Chinese online auctions. As Amazon.com and others have learned, once you are the dominant auction site, your position is very secure even in the face of devastating downtime, rampant fraud and high prices. People just want to be on the largest auction site. And, in China, the largest auction site is Taobao.com.

Forbes.com (our #1 mover and shaker today) recently published an article about the epic battle between Ebay China and Taobao. Link. As it stands today, Taobao is winning the battle, ranked at 26 on Alexa's global list (#8 in the Chinese list) while Ebay China is Ranked at 63 globally (#15 in China.) The rankings actually make this sound like a closer race than it actually is. According to Alexa's reach data, Taobao has more than twice as many daily users. Link. That's a solid win.

And, Taobao won't let the people of China or the folks at Ebay China forget it. Alexa rankings are mentioned repeatedly in press releases and on the site itself. Apparently being noticed as #1 is an important strategy in maintaining their #1 position.