Chinese search engines
Management summary
Historicity, led by Baidu, the Chinese search engines have successfully dominated the internet in China.
Changes are happening in the use of search engines in China and worldwide.
Starting in China, Baidu, while still the most used search engine in China, has experienced a significant drop in market share over the last three years.
Bing applies the Chinese rules and regulations, e.g., some content is not listed, allowing search engines to be available in China.
Google is not available directly in China. However, we understand that Google processes 19.4% of the Mandarin-language traffic worldwide.
We recommend spending search engine resources, such as SEO, marketing, etc., on Bing, Baidu, and Google in Mandarin.
AI is impacting search engine use in China and around the world. AI questions are replacing many engine search searches. We recommend that you review your website content and articles to see if information about your business products and services is being shown in AI results.
Search engines used in China
Baidu
Market Share: 47.07% (2025)
Baidu replaced Google in China, filling the gap left in the market by Google's absence in China. Baidu emphasises the importance of keyword relevance. Ensuring that website content naturally incorporates targeted keywords can enhance rankings.
There have been instances where Baidu's paid search results led users to unverified or misleading information. Baidu's search engine marketing (SEM) platform, called Baidu Tuiguang, allows advertisers to bid on specific keywords. Paid advertisements are displayed prominently alongside organic search results, often blending seamlessly, making it challenging for users to distinguish between paid and organic content.
Baidu App uses twin-engine search and feed functions, which leverage AI-powered algorithms and deep user insights to offer users a compelling experience. Baidu plans to introduce a new "deep search" feature to handle complex queries requiring enhanced reasoning and tool integration. This function will be available for free from April 1, 2025. This development also brings together DeepSeek's AI advancements with Baidu.
Most Baidu traffic is through the Baidu mobile app, with very few desktop users. This suggests that a higher proportion of Baidu users are consumers. Maybe this is why the Baidu market traffic search engine share fell from 75.88% (2018) to 47.07% (2025).
Bing
Market Share: 35.96% (2025)
Bing, the Microsoft search engine, is not blocked in China. It has achieved this by taking a different approach to Google, allowing the Bing search engine, through a Chinese JV, to have some content blocked to enable it to follow Chinese publication rules and regulations.
This allows overseas businesses to achieve local Chinese search engine listings, as you expect in the rest of the world. Please remember that, as in the rest of the world, searches will mainly be in Mandarin or business English.
What is surprising is the growth in Bing search engine market share, from 1.14% (2028) to 25.96% (2025). Bing is not a major partner in China that drives traffic to the search engine, i.e., Alibaba, Tencent, etc. Growth is reported due to organic business usage, which is good news for Bing and overseas businesses.
360 Search (Haosou)
Market Share: 8.08% (2025)
QiHoo360 started in PC security. In part, it could be compared to Norton 360. The significant difference is that it is free of cost and has access to your PC software data, which is used to make recommendations and display adverts. Many Chinese PCs install 360 to protect their PCs/mobiles from hacking, which has prevented this. In doing so, their search engine is promoted when 360 Search Engine is installed on a PC.
360 Search traffic has changed from 5.24% (2018) to 8.08% (2025).
Sogou
Market Share: 3.59% (2025)
Sogou is part of the Tencent software collection and links to the rest of the Tencent software product range, e.g., QQ and WeChat. Given this integration with WeChat and QQ, Sogou's growth in the Chinese Search Engine has not happened. This is due to the increase in the use of the Tencent WeChat platform, which contains its search engine.
Sogou traffic has changed from 13.78% (2018) to 3.59% (2025).
Shenma
Market Share: 1.68% (2025)
Shenma has been the most interesting search engine development in the last year. Part of the Alibaba family, Shenma is trying to bridge the gap between a traditional search engine and an e-commerce site, such as TMall, JDbuy, Amazon, etc., and a more interesting independent online store. Their growth in the Chinese search engine market was 10% (April 2018) in just over a year. With fast market growth, Shenma is finding traction in the market.
Sogou traffic has changed from 10.00% (2018) to 1.68% (2025).
Chinese Search Engine Market Share: >2% (2025)
Mandarin Speakers' Worldwide Market Share: 19.4% (2025)
We understand that Google has 19.4% (2025) of Mandarin speakers' search engine traffic worldwide.
Given that Google traffic in China is slowed to the point where it is unusable, opening the Google home page in China takes about five minutes.
People in China use Google by opening VPNs, mainly to connect to the internet in the USA and work around the Chinese firewall. The Chinese government actively restricts and blocks any VPN services. Google does not publicly report VPN-based traffic from China, making it difficult to quantify. Based on our experience, most VPN traffic is reported as a USA source.
Many Mandarin speakers live outside China. This is a significant Chinese market in terms of direct business opportunities and opportunities to work with Chinese people with sales networks in mainland China. Many overseas Chinese people have better networks and shipping arrangements than Chinese e-commerce companies.
Chinese search engine webmaster
Chinese search engines all have Webmasters like Google or Bing.
In Chinese, Pingyin is a Webmaster known as “Zhanzhang”.
The webmaster links are as follows;
- Baidu - https://ziyuan.baidu.com/
- Bing - https://www.bing.com/webmasters
- 360 Search - http://zhanzhang.so.com/
- Sogou - http://zhanzhang.sogou.com/
- Shenma - http://zhanzhang.sm.cn/
- Google - https://search.google.com
Changes in search engine usage
The impact of AI on search engines' worldwide traffic has not been published, given the growth in ChatGPT and DeepSeek, independent of the major search engines. All the search engines are now adding AI functionality to the top of their searches.
Well, before AI brought about current changes, search engine usage has been changing: -
- What is an internet search?
If you ask what is a search engine or how you Search in China, most of the time, you will get an answer like this: -
The problem is that the question, "Where do you go to search?" allows people to think in a long traditional line. The search must mean Search Engine.
You will get different answers if you ask the "Search" question more precisely.
- Where do you go and search for music?
- Where do you go and search for shoes?
- Where do you search for a new forklift truck?
You start seeing different answers...
If we ask the same question outside China, Amazon is currently the most used consumer search engine in the market.
In addition to e-commerce sites, social media and multimedia platforms, such as TikTok, have search engine functionality. Again, these are often not considered search engine platforms, even when people use them as the first point of an internet search—for example, TikTok.
The WeChat platform has a built-in search engine. Opening a WeChat account and linking your internet content will expose your business to WeChat.
- AI impact on search engines
AI's impact is changing monthly worldwide, both positively and negatively.
AI usage is growing worldwide, and search engines are responding by adding their own AI functionality. At the same time, we are starting to see companies ban AI due to concerns over the data collection by AI systems.
Search engines worldwide are ranging their own AI search results to the top of their search results. At best, business SEO needs to be changed; we believe the search engines adding their results will need a new approach to SEO. Based on the current search engine AI results, the search engine is merging 3 to 6 website articles and creating their article as the response. Positivity: the articles used in the AI response are credited to the source. From now on, AI will look to trusted sources of information and data, not websites with the best SEO titles and headings.
- Can we see changes in search engine traffic?
The data used in his articles is currently available on the internet. We have reviewed this data against the Chinese CNNIC internet usage report for the last five years. The data reported on the internet worldwide collates with CNNIC reports.
Search engines report percentage changes in the number of users and/or traffic volumes yearly. This method of reporting will not show an overall decline in search engine use if the change is across all search engines.
Search engines where they have merged platforms, e.g., Google purchased and merged YouTube into services. This has been very successful. The data available for the Search Engine data will include the change to using more multimedia requests in search engine searches. How the data is reported makes it unclear again where there has been a shift from traditional searches to different data requests, e.g., AI, multimedia, etc.
We conclude that the shift in Chinese search engine usage is critical to how you approach being seen online in China. Please do not just think in terms of Search Engine SEO. The more significant question is how internet users engage with our potential market.
Chinese search engine recommendations
- Make sure your website contents can be seen in China
- Check to see if your internet content can be seen in Chinese search engine
- Check to see if your products can be seen in Chinese e-Malls
- List your internet content in Chinese search engine webmaster - “Zhanzhang.”
- Open a WeChat account and link your internet contents.
Last modified: Version 4.3 - 18 February 2025