My previous article on search is regard to a search market survey done by CIC. The link is as follows:
http://chinese-net-gaming-stock.blogspot.com/2007/09/chinas-internet-market-survey.html
CNNIC just release its 2007 Search engine survey. It is their third years where they did this survey. I don’t have all the information yet. But the main summary can be found here:
http://it.news.hexun.com/2007-09-26/100803395.html
http://it.sohu.com/20070926/n252364394.shtml
I compile the data into 3 tables. The first table is the people’s first choice for the search engine in both 2007 and 2006:
| 1st Choice | 2007 | 2006 |
| Baidu | 74.5% | 62.1% |
| Google | 14.3% | 25.3% |
| Sogou | 2.8% | 3.2% |
| Yahoo | 2.1% | 4.8% |
| Sina | 1.7% | 1.2% |
| Soso | 0.7% | |
| Yodao | 0.6% | |
| Others | 3.3% | |
The second table compile the Brand Awareness data for each search engine. Note that I only have 2006 data. If anybody have the 2007 data, please let me know.
| Brand Awareness | 2007 | 2006 |
| Baidu | | 86.5% |
| Google | | 64% |
| Sogou | | 36% |
| Yahoo | | 38.5% |
| Sina | | 15% |
| Soso | | |
| Yodao | | |
| Others | | |
For this survey, they break down the cities they surveyed into three tiers. The following table gives the breakdown of Baidu vs. Google for the three tiered cities:
| | 1st Tier Cities | 2nd Tier Cities | 3rd Tier Cities |
| Baidu | 67.33% | 73.55% | 83.82% |
| Google | 22.11% | 14.78% | 4.99% |
If we compare this result with the survey done by CIC, there are some interesting points that can be made:
Baidu – For both surveys, Baidu is getting stronger (69.5% for CIC and 74.5% in CNNIC). The search engine war in
Google – For the CIC survey, users loss seems to be stabilizing (from 24.1% in 2006 to 23% in 2007). But the CNNIC survey indicated continued major users loss (25.3% in 2006 to 14.3% in 2007). The possible explanation is that CIC survey only pools the 1st tier cities. The user loss may have stabilized for the 1st tier cities, but it accelerated for the 2nd and 3rd tier cities.
Yahoo – Major user loss as indicated by both surveys. For CIC, it went down from 5.2% to 2.3% . For CNNIC, it went down from 4.8% to 2.1%. For the CNNIC, it had went down to the fourth search engine, behind Sogou.
Sogou – Again, there is a discrepancy by both surveys. For CIC, there is a major user loss, it went down from 3.2% to 1.8%. But for CNNIC, the user base has basically stabilized. It went down from 3.2% to 2.8%. A possible explanation is that users in the 1st tier cities has stop using Sogou. But that is countered by more users from the 2nd and 3rd tier cities started using Sogou as their first choice.
Others - Soso and Sina uses Google’s search engine. Ntes’s Yodao may be too little too late.
Summary – It looks like the search engine war is basically over, and Baidu is the winner. It has to be a humiliating defeat for Google. There is always a place for an English search engine in
It is basically game over for Yahoo. They have to be the biggest loser for this year’s search engine war.
For Sogou, they don’t seem to be doing that bad. They may have jumped up to the third place. But it is not much of a price considering they are only 2.8%. But I still think they may have one last hurrah left, next summer’s Olympics. If they keeps on putting man powers to develop their search engine technology and build some new features only for the Olympics related search, they may be a good position to grab some users next summer. For example, if they can convince Chinese users that they have a 5 or 10 minutes advantage for Olympics related scoreboard or stories, many Chinese users will give them a shot. Besides,
For others, the game is basically over. It may be too little too late for Ntes and Tencents.
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