Chinese search engine check list
Lead by Baidu, the Chinese search engines have been very successful in domination of the internet in China.
This has been helped many years ago, when Google and Chinese authorities could not fine away of working on the internet in China. Today, Google search engine, applications, files, etc have very limited access from the internet in China.
The latest Chinese search engine, Shenma, is mobile based and indexes consumer products. This enables searching of local and international consumer products from one application. If your sell consumer products on internet, we recommend checking Shenma to see if your products are listed.
These are the main Search Engines used in China and their current market share, as at April 2018.
Baidu was the Google replacement in China. It filled the gap left in the market by a “blocked”. In China. The issue with Baidu, if there is, you cannot determine in the results which are Ad placements and which listing which best matches your results. This is different to Google where Ads are clearly marked.
Shenma will believe is the most interesting development in search engine in the last year. Shenma, part of the Alibaba family, is trying to bridge the gap between a traditional search engine and e-Commerce site; Tmall, JDBuy, Amazon, etc. and more interesting independent on-line store. Their growth of the Chinese search engine market, 10% (April 2018), in just over year. With fast market growth, Shenma is finding traction market.
QiHoo360 started in PC security. In part, it could be compared to Norton 360. The major difference, is it is free of cost it and has access to you PC software data which is uses to make recommendation and display adverts. Many Chinese PC install 360 to protect their PCs / mobiles from hacking which it is has been successful in preventing. In doing so, when 360 Search Engine installed on PC their search engine in promoted, like Microsoft used to automatically install their IE browser.Qi
Sogou is part of the Tencent software collection. Sogou links to the rest of Tencent software product range e.g. QQ and WeChat. Given this integration with WeChat and QQ the Sogou growth in the Chinese Search Engine has not happen. This we believe is due the growth in use of Tencent WeChat platform which contains its own search engine.
Google while have over 80% of the world-wide search engine market. In China they less than 2% of the market.
Bing, Microsoft search engine, is not blocked. Bing is an international with its advance search engine software cannot get any traction in China. A reasoning for this could be explained by their luck of partner in China i.e. Alibaba, Tencent, etc.
The other and small Chinese search engines have a market share of approx. 2.00%.
Chinese search engine webmaster
Chinese search engines all have Webmaster like Google or Bing.
In Chinese Pingyin is Webmaster is known as “Zhanzhang”.
The webmaster links are as follows;
- Baidu - https://ziyuan.baidu.com/
- Sogou - http://zhanzhang.sogou.com/
- 360 search - http://zhanzhang.so.com/
- Shenma - http://zhanzhang.sm.cn/
What is an internet search?
If you ask; what is a Search Engine or how do you Search in China (or in the ROW) most of the time you will get an answer like this: -
The problem is the question you are asking, "were do you go to search" allows people to think a long traditional line. Search must mean Search Engine.
If you ask the "Search" question more specifically you start getting different answers.
- Where do you go and search for music?
- Where do you go and search for shoes?
- Where do you search for new forklift truck?
You start seeing different answers...
If we ask the same question outside China, Amazon is the most used consumer search engine in the market currently.
In China you do have the advantage of Shenma which trying to bridge the gap between the search engines and retail e-Commerce site.
WeChat platform has its own built in search engine. Opening WeChat account and linking your internet contents will give your business exposure in WeChat.
Chinese search engine recommendations
- Make sure your website contents can be seen in China
- Check to see if your internet contents can be seen in Chinese search engine
- Check to see if your products can be seen in Chinese e-malls
- List your internet contents in Chinese search engines webmaster - “Zhanzhang”
- Open a WeChat account and link your internet contents
Last modified: July 2019