Baidu posts 87 percent rise in profit

SEATTLE, July 23 (Reuters) - Baidu.com Inc (BIDU.O), China's top search engine, said on Wednesday its second-quarter net profit jumped 87 percent on strong online advertising and Internet traffic growth ahead of the Beijing Olympics.

Beijing-based Baidu posted profit of 265 million yuan ($38.6 million) for the three months ended June 30, compared with 141.9 million yuan a year earlier.

The result beat the average expectation for net profit of $35.5 million, according to eight analysts polled by Reuters Estimates.

Baidu dominated China's Web search market in the second quarter with market share of nearly 63 percent, according to data firm iResearch. Google Inc (GOOG.O) had 26 percent and Yahoo China was third with nearly 8 percent of the 1.3 billion yuan ($190.6 million) market, it said. ($1 = 6.8591 yuan) (Reporting by Sophie Taylor and Dai Wakabayashi in Seattle; editing by Jeffrey Benkoe)