China Search Daily

Who is the Number One at Chinese Search Engines market?
The answer is Baidu.

Where is Google China?
Google is the third, right after Yahoo.

Why Yahoo search is the Second?
They still relied on the real name (3721) business. The search performance for them is not as strong as the position indicates.

According to the report of Analysys International, at 1 quater of 2006, Baidu’s market share was 43.9%, Yahoo China was 21.10%, Google China 13.20%. The total market scale for chinese search engine is 303 million RMB, 175 million RMB of which is from CPC, 9 million RMB from  search AD ( fixed ranking ), 120 million RMB from real name search.

Although the real name search still has a big share, their performance is shrinking. Chinese real name search is not a long-term products. The advertisers are losing their interests at Real Name search. According to the two main real name search player, Yahoo China’s 3721 and Zhongsou, their revenue growth is negative now.

Google should speed up its localization. I can see many chinese googlers have international company working experience. They are more global than local.

Take Yahoo China for example, before the Alibaba deal with Yahoo. Leaded by Mr Chou, Yahoo China is very local and aggressive.

Google should find a person like Mr Chou, the former Yahoo China CEO, founder of 3721.

The search engine business started as search ADs 6 years ago in China. Now only the voice of PPC is loudly.

Search ADs includes Banner, Fixed Top 10 positions and several left side vertical formats. Yes, the ADs types here before were very complicated, even more complicated than portal ADs. Some portals Ads like pop up was once there at search result. Sina used to have the most complicated search ADs formats, and sure later became the most not user-friendly search.

PPC is well-known by the world now.

But I still believe that search AD, or delicated search AD format can be very helpful for advertisers.

The function of PPC is mostly sale leads, the function of search AD is mostly brand awareness.

Zhongsou.com and 163.com still have banner AD at their search result. 21CN, as the most influencial entertaiment broadband portal, launched their Banner AD too.

Brand awareness may benefit from PPC, but will not only from PPC, search AD will still be prodcutive for a long time.