SOHU observation 1

Sohu is a comprehensive website, which is the largest portal site in China. Every network user knows Sohu.

Everyone who for the first time goes to Sohu’s home page may be impressed by its colorful characters and navigation bars, ordered and dense layout, and the huge information.

Sohu in Chinese means two words – search & fox. Certainly I don’t know why founder of Sohu named his website fox, however, a fox tail is the website’s logo as is shown at the top middle of the home page, which is really a small logo.

There are three columns in home page which make readers easier to follow.

Pictures
There are only small pictures at the top left within some columns, especially within the classified-news columns on lower half of the home page.

Each small picture with short caption tells a different story from the rest of the column. The picture stories are either gossip or something like inside stories, all of which are of highly public interest.

Jakob's Rules - Search engine
Sohu has its own search engine named Sogou. Again, it’s very interesting that Sogou in Chinese means two words either – search & dog. The search box lies right in the middle when one opens Sohu without need to scroll up and down.

You can search for news, website, blog, music, picture and maps. It has been listed below the search box that what are the most frequently searched words recently, which make it clear what is hot news at a glance.

When you click on search, a new window opens up. Both at the top of the new search page and the bottom are search boxes. The related searched words are at the bottom either.

When you type a wrong word to search, although results are still available, the search engine will ask you “do you mean XXX (the right word)?”

The results are ranked by updated time, which means the most recently updated website ranks first. The article title, description, article link, rate for skimming, and updated time are displayed at the same time.

Jakob's Rules – Color of visited links & Opening new windows
On the home page, when you click on a link, its color will change, but what’s interesting is when you click on any blank place on the home page the changed color will change back to be original.

On the other pages of Sohu, the color of visited links will not change.

And whatever new content links you click on to go forwards, either news or AD, it will be opened in a new window. The same content, I mean a long article in several pages, on that condition a new page will open in same window. When you go backwards such as from a piece of news page to homepage, it will always be the same window.

I believe these two aspects meet Chinese custom. Most of the other Chinese websites are the same as Sohu.

Chinese people prefer to use browser that windows opened in different tabs but in one window. So there is no need to worry about one window covers another, or many windows fill up the screen, or hard to find out the page you want from many windows. We can see page titles at a glance at the tabs.