Whether you're just doing research for travel or whether you're a Chinese native or expatriate, you'll be able to catch up on the latest Chinese news, sports, entertainment and stay in touch by using the many Chinese search engines and directories available on the web. Here are some of the most popular and useful sites:

Baidu.com - The world's 6th most visited site and the top Chinese website, and that's saying something. This site is a true search engine in the same vein as Google, offering general search, MP3 search, news search and image search. Baidu.com is the world's leading Chinese language search engine.

GCWeb - A traditional human reviewed directory, similar to the top English language directory called DMOZ, GCWeb offers hundreds of categories and subcategories where you drill down to find what you're looking for. Since human reviewed directories have more stringent approval guidelines than search engines, you'll often get much better results, albeit less results. Find GCWeb at gcweb.net/gcweb/

Yahoo China - This is the Chinese version of U.S. founded portal Yahoo. You'll find most of the same type of content as the main Yahoo site but in the Chinese language, including traditional search results, free email, news, shopping, sports and more. Available at yahoo.com.cn

Google China - This is the Chinese language version of the top Internet search engine, Google. It looks exactly the same as other versions of Google, except the text and search results are in Chinese. Find it at google.cn

China Site - ChinaSite.com is an English language directory of all things Chinese on the web. Boasting over 8500 links to Chinese and Chinese related websites, updated daily, this is a great site for English only users who are interested in learning more about the country.

Sogou - Sogou.com is another Google type search engine that offers traditional website search results as well as picture search, map search, document search and more. A weather section and mobile features are also offered.

Sina - Sina.com is more of a portal, but it offers an English language as well as Chinese language version. It also has extensive search capability with specialized search engines for video, multimedia and even blogs. In addition, it also offers a large shopping mall, dating service, SMS services and a games section.

Juxit - An innovative newcomer to the Chinese search engine world that has been going through refreshes every few months. It is the world's very first Chinese meta search engine and been online 2004, taking results from a number of Chinese and English search engines. It also offers a news search engine, audio and video search engine, image search, travel search, people search and more. The site can be found at Juxit.com

Muzi - Muzi.com bills itself as "The Digital Great Wall" and is a true bilingual English and Chinese portal with sections including search, gallery, library, movies, forums, polls and a dating service. It also offers a service similar to My Yahoo's personalized homepages, where you can choose the content on your browser's start page, called My Muzi. You can find this site at Muzi.com

There are many other smaller Chinese search engines and directories, but these are the largest sites currently available.

Lydia Quinn
writes for www.Juxit.com