Domestic company Baidu has long had a stranglehold on the search engine market for China, but over the next few years that may change as international rivals are increasingly seeing the region as a ‘strategic market’.
Currently Baidu has the same grip on the Chinese search market as Google does worldwide, with a firm hold on roughly two-thirds of the potential audience. However in the final days of 2009, both Microsoft and Google made statements expressing their interest in the region – home to world’s largest internet market with an estimated 350 million users.
Just two days before the new year, Reuters reported that Microsoft viewed China’s search market as a “top priority”. Since launching in the English-language market in June, the company’s Bing search engine site has steadily made inroads in the search engine market share for the U.S, and to a lesser degree other markets such as the UK. Reuters reports that Microsoft hopes to see a parallel success with the launch of its Chinese-language Bing site, currently in beta phase.
Reuters reports that since launching in June, the number of users who visit the Bing Beta page in China at least three times a month has increased 30 percent as of October. It has also established a search technology centre in mainland China. In an email to Reuters, the company said this was to “get a deeper understanding of what Chinese users need, to be able to deliver the best product to them”.
“Microsoft is committed to the the China Market, and the search market in China is the most important strategic market for Microsoft”
Meanwhile, Google has taken a different approach. The company is the second-largest party in the search engine market for China, but its share has fluctuated between 25.9% and 17% over the past three years – a remarkably different situation to its performance in the rest of the world.
Since launching Google China in 2006 the company has struggled to compete with the incumbent service. This is perhaps best demonstrated by Google China’s own news release in 2008 that the most popular search made by users in the mainland was ‘Baidu’.
However a post on CNN Money’s BrainstormTech blog claims that Google has made huge strides in adapting to the Chinese language. Reportedly, users find that Google’s indexing accommodates the differences between the engine’s native language and that of the region surprisingly well – and may in fact offer better ‘search experience’. Baidu has been criticised for mixing its PPC advertising with its organic search results.
If successful, both companies could stand to gain a huge increase in their potential audience – and by extension, a huge increase in their ability to attract search engine marketing revenue. Thanks to the region’s dense population and the dominance Baidu has held so far, even incremental successes in attracting users could have significant benefits.
Research from Analysys International suggests that the Chinese search market was worth around $293 million in the third quarter of 2009. Speaking to Reuters, Jin Naili from the research firm said that “within one or two years, there could be large changes in China’s search market”.
Related posts:
