<p>Those crazy characters is actually meaningless for native Chinese.</p>

<p>I find baidu use a web technique that use character encoding to simplify their development. </p>

<p><a href="https://i.sstatic.net/pUoMM.png" rel="nofollow noreferrer"><img src="https://i.sstatic.net/pUoMM.png" alt="enter image description here"></a></p>

<p><a href="https://i.sstatic.net/DQHoS.png" rel="nofollow noreferrer"><img src="https://i.sstatic.net/DQHoS.png" alt="enter image description here"></a></p>

<p>Through the web tools,I find the icon is used  '\e601' for the Bai,and '\e602' for du ,'\e603' for 百科.</p>

<p>So it is not the problem of baidu, maybe caused by some other extensions or softwares. Or maybe your brower do not support the technology.</p>

<p>Suggest you change a browser(NOT IE) to find whether the problem still occured.</p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2015-08-26T13:02:09.977Z
why not IE? Not defending IE, but IE is one of the mainstream browsers and modern IE supports the technology rather than some Chinese browsers like 酷遊、QQ and such. People uses Chrome most according to statistics and it's better to suggest using Chrome or Firefox on web browsers ;)
Daniel Cheung
CC BY-SA 3.0
2015-08-24T03:01:06.653Z
2015-08-24T03:01:06.653Z
fan123199
<h2>That's a web development technique, the icon font</h2>

<p>What you see is meaningless text. This is actually a web development technique. <strong>They are attempting the use a custom designed "font" to display icons instead of the weird characters.</strong> However, when the icon font failed to load, your browser then attempts to display the "text" with a fallback font, generally: "Arial", "Times New Roman", "PMingLiU", etc.</p>

<p>So instead of <code>梜</code>, you should see an <code>chevron to the right</code>. That's because they filled the font with icons.</p>

<p>Here's an example of such font: <a href="https://fortawesome.github.io/Font-Awesome/" rel="nofollow">Font Awesome</a></p>

<hr>

<h2>Can I use icon fonts to write a passage?</h2>

<p>Icon fonts are only meant for graphical displays, not readable font. You cannot type a paragraph with the icon font, they would probably all be icons (for you to decipher ;) ).</p>

<h2>Why did they use icon font, why not pictures?</h2>

<p>That is because modern font is vector graphical. That means you can scale they up or down and they will not get pixelized. That is great for devices with high quality displays. Also, because loading a font means you can change its color and the pack will still be smaller than an image pack.</p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2015-08-26T07:44:12.657Z
2015-08-26T07:58:26.880Z
2015-08-26T07:58:26.880Z
Daniel Cheung
<p><a href="https://i.sstatic.net/U5V4P.png" rel="nofollow noreferrer"><img src="https://i.sstatic.net/U5V4P.png" alt="baidu"></a></p>

<ul>
<li>What's Baidu doing with all these crazy characters everywhere?</li>
</ul>

<p>Seems kind of meaningless to me.</p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2015-08-23T07:37:12.783Z
They are either gone by now or they are only showing this decoration to users at selected locations.
imrek
CC BY-SA 3.0
2015-08-23T08:15:14.157Z
Why the downvote? There is nothing wrong with the question. It does not solve a general problem, but it is related to Chinese, especially the obscure characters, I haven't been able to recognize any of them.
imrek
CC BY-SA 3.0
2015-08-23T08:23:45.817Z
@DrunkenMaster Yeah, I can't seem to reproduce it actually.
Mou某
CC BY-SA 3.0
2015-08-23T08:32:12.410Z
Have you found any of the characters, I only search for the first 人+革, it's not in the Unihan DB.
imrek
CC BY-SA 3.0
2015-08-23T08:35:30.907Z
@DrunkenMaster I think 人+革 is in SunmanPUA because zisea gives it a unicode of: E601 - which is part of the Private Area Use characters & zisea usually lists sunmanpua characters, for some reason I don't really know. Perhaps it was just that font 作祟-ing.(?)
Mou某
CC BY-SA 3.0
2015-08-23T11:11:49.330Z
@user3306356
Maybe there was something wrong with the encoding on your computer? Since the only garbled characters in the picture you posted were the three on the top left, it could be they are encoded somewhat differently on the part of the website, and your computer didn’t handle them correctly. Or maybe you’re blocking a script that would otherwise have told your computer which encoding to use on these particular characters.
Philipp
CC BY-SA 3.0
2015-08-24T08:35:48.703Z
my guess: Baidu.com sometimes prevent other web-crawlers to take advantage of its own content so they replace the text with encoded characters and then decode them on the client-side (your browser). However, sometimes it fails.
AGamePlayer
<meaning><characters>
What's Baidu doing with all these crazy characters everywhere?
# What's Baidu doing with all these crazy characters everywhere?

(Asked by: username_0 on 2015-08-23)

[![baidu](https://i.sstatic.net/U5V4P.png)](https://i.sstatic.net/U5V4P.png)

* What's Baidu doing with all these crazy characters everywhere?

Seems kind of meaningless to me.

**Tags:** meaning, characters

> **Comments:**
> **username_1**: They are either gone by now or they are only showing this decoration to users at selected locations.  
> **username_1**: Why the downvote? There is nothing wrong with the question. It does not solve a general problem, but it is related to Chinese, especially the obscure characters, I haven't been able to recognize any of them.  
> **username_0**: @DrunkenMaster Yeah, I can't seem to reproduce it actually.  
> **username_1**: Have you found any of the characters, I only search for the first 人+革, it's not in the Unihan DB.  
> **username_0**: @DrunkenMaster I think 人+革 is in SunmanPUA because zisea gives it a unicode of: E601 - which is part of the Private Area Use characters & zisea usually lists sunmanpua characters, for some reason I don't really know. Perhaps it was just that font 作祟-ing.(?)  
> **username_2**: @user3306356 Maybe there was something wrong with the encoding on your computer? Since the only garbled characters in the picture you posted were the three on the top left, it could be they are encoded somewhat differently on the part of the website, and your computer didn’t handle them correctly. Or maybe you’re blocking a script that would otherwise have told your computer which encoding to use on these particular characters.  
> **username_3**: my guess: Baidu.com sometimes prevent other web-crawlers to take advantage of its own content so they replace the text with encoded characters and then decode them on the client-side (your browser). However, sometimes it fails.  

---

## 2 answers

### Answer by username_5 on 2015-08-26. Score: 5 | Accepted answer

## That's a web development technique, the icon font

What you see is meaningless text. This is actually a web development technique. **They are attempting the use a custom designed "font" to display icons instead of the weird characters.** However, when the icon font failed to load, your browser then attempts to display the "text" with a fallback font, generally: "Arial", "Times New Roman", "PMingLiU", etc.

So instead of `梜`, you should see an `chevron to the right`. That's because they filled the font with icons.

Here's an example of such font: [Font Awesome](https://fortawesome.github.io/Font-Awesome/)

---

## Can I use icon fonts to write a passage?

Icon fonts are only meant for graphical displays, not readable font. You cannot type a paragraph with the icon font, they would probably all be icons (for you to decipher ;) ).

## Why did they use icon font, why not pictures?

That is because modern font is vector graphical. That means you can scale they up or down and they will not get pixelized. That is great for devices with high quality displays. Also, because loading a font means you can change its color and the pack will still be smaller than an image pack.


---

### Answer by username_4 on 2015-08-24. Score: 3

Those crazy characters is actually meaningless for native Chinese.

I find baidu use a web technique that use character encoding to simplify their development.

[![enter image description here](https://i.sstatic.net/pUoMM.png)](https://i.sstatic.net/pUoMM.png)

[![enter image description here](https://i.sstatic.net/DQHoS.png)](https://i.sstatic.net/DQHoS.png)

Through the web tools,I find the icon is used '\e601' for the Bai,and '\e602' for du ,'\e603' for 百科.

So it is not the problem of baidu, maybe caused by some other extensions or softwares. Or maybe your brower do not support the technology.

Suggest you change a browser(NOT IE) to find whether the problem still occured.

> **Comments:**
> **username_5**: why not IE? Not defending IE, but IE is one of the mainstream browsers and modern IE supports the technology rather than some Chinese browsers like 酷遊、QQ and such. People uses Chrome most according to statistics and it's better to suggest using Chrome or Firefox on web browsers ;)  

---

