{"id":141997,"date":"2020-09-14T15:34:58","date_gmt":"2020-09-14T15:34:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.searchenginewatch.com\/?p=141997"},"modified":"2020-09-14T15:34:58","modified_gmt":"2020-09-14T15:34:58","slug":"are-search-engines-dead-in-china","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/2020\/09\/14\/are-search-engines-dead-in-china\/","title":{"rendered":"Are search engines dead in China?"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"well\">\n<h3>30-second summary:<\/h3>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">WeChat, a widely-used Chinese app, provides users with a variety of features including messaging, shopping, and more, inevitably affecting the search landscape with the abundance of data and content it provides to users.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Chinese users are stepping away from using traditional search engines, and instead, are leaning on <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">searching within one-stop apps that are more tailored to their search queries.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Many companies like Bytedance and Alipay are increasingly trying to make their mark in search by creating large ecosystems that effectively tend to users\u2019 needs.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Many of these challenger platforms are aiming to gain more dominance in the search market to capitalize on rising search demands.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<h2>\u00a0<span style=\"font-weight: 800;\">Are search engines dead in China?<\/span><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">You can\u2019t imagine the internet without the search engine. It started out as a way of finding stuff on the various websites that were popping up, but ended up shaping the very medium it was indexing. Nobody would build a website without making sure it was molded around the demands of the biggest search engines in its customers\u2019 region.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">But that doesn\u2019t mean search itself isn\u2019t changing. As we\u2019re seeing in China, <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">the days of the search engine website that you visit to start your exploration could be numbered.<\/span><\/p>\n<h2><b>WeChat, therefore WeSearch<\/b><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The largest search engine in China has always been (and remains) Baidu, which has a billion regular users, making it the second most popular search resource in the world.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">But there\u2019s a new player in town. <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/cdc-tencent-com-1258344706.image.myqcloud.com\/uploads\/2020\/08\/26\/c798476aba9e18d44d9179e103a2e07f.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">WeChat has 1.2 billion users globally, mainly in China<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. It\u2019s a one-stop app with a multitude of uses, not limited to messaging, consuming content, shopping, accessing services, and mobile payments. It\u2019s ubiquitous in the nation, so it\u2019s easy to see how it could become a hugely disruptive element in the search landscape. Because of its huge user base and multiple functions, there are billions of different user actions recorded and thousands of items of content being created and consumed on a daily basis.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">WeChat has a large volume of content and data within its ecosystem, including articles from WeChat official accounts (similar to Facebook business pages), mini-programs (mini-apps embedded within WeChat which don\u2019t require installation on users\u2019 mobile devices), news content from Tencent News, along with content from Tencent Music and WeChat Video channel. More importantly, WeChat has a partnership with Sogou, China\u2019s second-largest search provider, to pump more information into WeChat\u2019s ecosystem.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-142001\" src=\"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/wechat-stats.png\" alt=\"WeChat stats\" width=\"512\" height=\"288\" srcset=\"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/wechat-stats.png 512w, https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/wechat-stats-300x169.png 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 512px) 100vw, 512px\" \/><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Plugged into this huge index, WeChat search has become a powerful tool to find information. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">A <a href=\"https:\/\/socialbeta.com\/t\/interact-with-the-reader-about-wechat-christmas-gift-2019-1203\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">survey by SocialBeta<\/a> showed that 32% of WeChat users use it as their prime search engi<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">ne of choice, and 46% use it as a general search tool<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. These are big numbers.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Now, Tencent, the own<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">er of WeChat (and Sogou\u2019s major shareholder), is moving to buy Sogou outright, potentially empowering its business model to take on more of the traditional search engines\u2019 market share and to grab the benefits that come with it.<\/span><\/p>\n<h2><b>Search is moving away from pure search engines<\/b><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The amount of searching going on in China is as strong as ever, but increasingly, people are turning away from the traditional se<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">arch providers and searching within the enormous ecosystems Chinese tech giants build.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">A typical Chinese consumer can have various different sources to search for information depending on what they are looking for. To search for a product, they can go straight to dominant ecommerce platforms like Taobao and JD.com, then search in Xiaohongshu to look for inspiration and community reviews. If they are interested in a brand, a celebrity, or trending news, they will head to WeChat, Weibo, or Toutiao. To find a nearby store or a local service they will search in WeChat and Alipay without downloading any apps. A <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">typical American would do most of that through Google, even when searching for products on Amazon, despite it having a perfectly good search engine of its own.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-142000\" src=\"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/search-engine-market-in-china.png\" alt=\"Search engine market in China\" width=\"512\" height=\"288\" srcset=\"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/search-engine-market-in-china.png 512w, https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/search-engine-market-in-china-300x169.png 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 512px) 100vw, 512px\" \/><\/p>\n<h2><b>Search defragmenting<\/b><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">When it comes to search engine market share in China, only traditional search engines like Baidu and Sogou will be classified in the landscape by all the statistics providers. The<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> movement of other players has been neglected for a long time. Toutiao, for example, is the top news and information aggregation app in the country, with <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/index.iresearch.com.cn\/new\/#\/app\/list?orderBy=2&amp;cId=1&amp;csId=0\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">275 million monthly active users<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. Its owner is Bytedance, a company that\u2019s currently in the Western news, as it\u2019s the owner of TikTok, a video sharing app that President Trump w<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">ants to ban in America.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">TikTok\u2019s cousin in China, <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/index.iresearch.com.cn\/new\/#\/app\/list?orderBy=2&amp;cId=16&amp;csId=0\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Douyin, has more than 400 million users<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. Similar to WeChat, millions of pieces of content and actions happen across Bytedance\u2019s portfolio, ranging from news and articles to videos. With the data and information continuing to grow in the app, an increasing number of users are adapting to use search in the news app to look for information.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">However, in March 2020, when Toutiao launched an independent search engine to rival Baidu, it failed to meet expectations and didn\u2019t ma<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">ke much of a crater in Baidu\u2019s landscape.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">With <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/index.iresearch.com.cn\/new\/#\/app\/list?orderBy=2&amp;cId=5&amp;csId=0\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">700 <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">million users<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Alipay is another rising star in the search landscape. It is <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">a financial app that allows users to not only pay for things, but do a host of daily tasks like picking up parcels, ordering food, applying for credit cards, and buying and selling stocks and shares. Again, search within this ecosystem is a significant competitive thing, as it can guide users towards certain products and services over rivals.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">According to third party research, half of the search queries happening in Alipay are finance related. In early 2020, Alipay even made an improvement to its in-app search algorithm so users can directly search for the name of a stock or finance product, instead of accessing them through the menu.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Alipay has not stopped there &#8211; this year, as the major sponsor of a trending reality show, &#8220;<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Street Dance of China Season 3&#8243;<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, Alipay has been actively placing branded search bars in the show to encourage more viewers to engage with its in-app search function.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-142002 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/ali-play-sponsores-major-reality-show-in-china.jpg\" alt=\"Alipay sponsors major reality show in China\" width=\"512\" height=\"301\" srcset=\"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/ali-play-sponsores-major-reality-show-in-china.jpg 512w, https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/ali-play-sponsores-major-reality-show-in-china-300x176.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 512px) 100vw, 512px\" \/><\/p>\n<h2><b>Why are they all eyeing the search market?<\/b><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The answer is ad revenue. Many of the platforms mentioned above, including Weibo, Tencent, and Toutiao are already offering paid search ad positions to capitalize on the search demand.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Clearly, Chinese people regularly use all or most of these apps on a daily basis, so they don\u2019t tend to stick to a single search engine, as is the case with Europe and the US, where Google dominates and permeates throughout the entire digital world. A rough parallel could be the search results given by Facebook and Twitter,<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> but neither has the dominance or the captive audience that these Chinese giants can boast.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Should Baidu be worried? By far, Baidu provides the biggest index compared to all the other players. Also, like Google, Baidu has vigorously diversified, and provides dozens of services from maps to cloud storage \u2013 and its search engine backs up the whole ecosystem. The biggest long-term challenge for traditional search engines is that all the valuable data and content from super apps like WeChat, Toutiao, and Aliplay have not, and will not, open their indexes to service users outside their ecosystems.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In the short term, Google\u2019s search d<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">ominance doesn\u2019t look like it will be challenged in the same way Baidu has been. Through accidents of history and habitual use among consumers, it\u2019s hard to knock big search engines off their perch. But nothing is predictable in digital, and analysts will certainly be keeping a close eye on the petri dish that is the Chinese search sector.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><em><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Ada Luo is Regional Account Director (APAC) at Croud.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Users are moving away from traditional search engines towards in-app search on the giant Chinese platforms. Is this the end of the search engine?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1092,"featured_media":142003,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,5],"tags":[35,8638,27130,252,27939,27937,27938],"content_type":[],"class_list":["post-141997","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-industry","category-seo","tag-baidu","tag-censorship-in-china","tag-china-search-market","tag-chinese-search-engines","tag-in-app-search","tag-wechat","tag-wechat-search"],"acf":{"tad_independentcommercial":false,"tad_content_format":false},"post_info":{"name":"idris.nagri@blenheimchalcot.com idris.nagri@blenheimchalcot.com","title":"","thumbnail_url":"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/Are-search-engines-dead-in-China.png","category":"Industry","timeago":"5y"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141997","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1092"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=141997"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141997\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/142003"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=141997"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=141997"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=141997"},{"taxonomy":"content_type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/content_type?post=141997"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}