Jul. 22 – Second quarter profits for China’s internet search giant Baidu more than doubled last year’s figures as the company reeled in close to US$126 million, according to a report released by Baidu on Wednesday.

Figures for the April-June quarter were strong across the board and several surpassed the expectations of leading analysts. Total revenue for the period reached US$282.3 million compared with the US$160.7 million received over the same quarter last year. The US$126 million in profits was also a huge increase over the US$56.1 earned over the same period last year. On average, leading analysts had underestimated that the internet company would pull in around US$276.6 million in quarterly revenue and roughly US$104.4 in quarterly profits.

Baidu has set its sights even higher for next quarter, forecasting revenue figures to sit somewhere between US$324.4 million and US$333.3 million while analysts expect the company’s revenues to fall a bit lower, around US$321.6 million.

According to iResearch, Baidu increased its share of China’s search engine market by 3 percent over the second quarter, up to 70.8 percent. With the world’s largest internet market at an estimated 420 million individuals, that translates to 297.36 million users. Google, Baidu’s quasi-competitor for the China market, lost a 2.2 percent stake in the search engine market over the same quarter, reducing its share of the market to 27.3 percent.

“We believe the market-share gain for Baidu versus the market-share loss for Google is likely related to Google China’s partial exit,” Alicia Yap, an analyst at Citigroup, wrote in a July 19 report, citing “increasingly bad user experiences.”

Baidu has thrived since Google decided to stand up against the Chinese government’s freedom-deflating policies, triggered by an alleged hacking attack on its servers. Baidu’s shares rose to US$74.04 in after-hours trading on Wednesday; an incredible rise from its mid-January low of US$38.65.