Regarding the competitive situation in the Chinese search market, the share changes between Microsoft Bing and Baidu, as well as the problems and challenges faced by the search industry.
- Microsoft’s Bing has reached a historic high in China’s desktop search market share, surpassing Baidu to become the largest desktop search engine. This view is presented based on information from Xueqiu, which states that Bing commands a 37.4% market share.
- There is controversy over the aforementioned figure. This view cites authoritative data to suggest that Baidu’s PC-based search share is four times higher than Bing’s. This may indicate that Bing’s share in the desktop search market is not as high as suggested or that there may be errors in the data.
- Baidu has a penetration rate of 96.3% in the traditional search engine market (both PC and mobile). This indicates that Baidu still maintains a high market share in the overall search market.
- Although Baidu remains ahead in the search business, it faces increasing competition from competitors such as 360, Sogou, Maoneng, and Qihoo, as well as emerging internet platforms such as WeChat and ByteDance.
- China’s search industry is facing issues such as information isolation, increasing competition for high-quality content, and changes in online marketing services. These issues are causing search engines to face challenges related to meeting users’ diverse needs, increasing the process and time to obtain answers, competitive pressure on content ecosystems, creators facing data anxiety, and a decline in user trust due to advertising ranking systems.
- In response to these challenges, Chinese search companies need to seek innovation and embrace change. This involves Baidu’s use of generative AI technology to optimize its content ecosystem, as well as other search companies’ efforts to provide better search tools and content services to retain users and enhance their competitiveness.
