Google received a strong revenue growth of over 60% in China last year to US$3 billion. It led Google to expand its advertising sales team there, according to the report from The Information.

ByteDance who spent over US$300 million on overseas adverting to promote Tik Tok was reported to be one of Google’s biggest advertisements buyers. Alibaba was one of them who also spent a lot for Alipay and cloud computing business.

Also read: 71.1% Weibo’s Miaopai users have a high purchasing power

Google also tries to attract small-sized enterprises besides the big ones. Its advertising team working to serve small-sized customers increased by two-fold to around 200 persons in the past year.

Currently, Google has over 20 advertising centers in China where advertisers are able to see how their ads perform in the search, e-mail, and other platforms of Google. Be it a technology giant or small companies, considering the sluggish user growth, they make the same choice to seek new revenue sources from the global market. Thus, some global advertising platforms such as Google, Facebook, and Amazon have become their best choice to promote products and services overseas.

Facebook generated US$26.49 billion in ads sales from the US and Canada market. By comparison, revenue derived from advertising sales in China was between US$5 billion and US$7 billion.

The large advertising expenses got paid as Tik Tok taking the first spot of the top 20 most downloaded video/live streaming apps list in January 2019 with nearly 75 million downloads from App Store and Google Play overseas. The figure roughly summed that of the players ranked from the second to the eighth position, according to the data from Sensor Tower.

Top brands in China by advertising spend in 2018

Not long after Facebook’s Hangzhou subsidiary launch, Google was reported to be planning a launch of a censored search engine in China. A poll was created on Weibo asking “if Google returns to China, which will you choose between Google and Baidu?”. 72.8% voted for Google.

Google released its first WeChat Mini-Programs “Guess My Sketch” in July 2018, which went viral on WeChat Moments for a while.

Later on August 6, the state-run People’s Daily posted an article on its Twitter and Facebook accounts that Google is welcome to return to the mainland China but it must comply with local laws.

Robin Li Yanhong, chairman and CEO of Baidu, commented on his WeChat Moments that Baidu has the confidence to defeat Google again if it returns.

China has seen the internet being developed at an unprecedented speed, with the number of mobile internet users more than doubled, from 303 million in 2010 to over 800 million in 2018. Baidu has kept the leading position in the search engines market for years.

While Google kept taking over 90% shares of global search market for years running, with Baidu only took less than 2%.

It’s a big challenge and question mark whether Google makes its search engine available in China again. Its workers are already protesting its censored search engine plans for China. And, Google is not close to launching a search product in China according to its CEO.

A survey might not tell what will really happen if Google did return to China with a search product. But the poll on Weibo by Sina Jiangsu account has been deleted.

Find out Mobile Search Engine Market in China

Google and Jingdong will explore joint development of retail solutions to enable helpful, personalized and frictionless shopping experiences in several regions including Southeast Asia, the U.S., and Europe. JD.com is to join Google Shopping and offer a curated selection of high-quality products to consumers across multiple regions.

JD.com and Google announced today that Google will invest $550 million in cash in JD.com as part of a strategic partnership.

Google and JD plan to collaborate on a range of strategic initiatives, including joint development of retail solutions in a range of regions around the world, including Southeast Asia, the U.S., and Europe.

By applying JD’s supply chain and logistics expertise and Google’s technology strengths, the two companies aim to explore the creation of next-generation retail infrastructure solutions, with the goal of offering helpful, personalized and frictionless shopping experiences. JD also plans to make a selection of high-quality products available for sale through Google Shopping in multiple regions.

Under the agreements, Google will receive 27,106,948 newly issued JD.com Class A ordinary shares at an issue price of $20.29 per share, equivalent to $40.58 per ADS, based on the volume-weighted average trading price over the prior 10 trading days.

China e-commerce market snapshot 2018

StatCounter data shows Baidu’s market share was 76.05% in China search engines market in April 2017, followed by Shenma (8.78%), 360 Search (7.87%), Sogou (3.31%), and Google (1.84%).

Baidu is more dominant in China’s mobile search market with over 82% market share, followed by Shenma (13.79%) according to StatCounter.

China search engine market overview Q1 2017

Shenma search was a co-founded mobile search engine by UCWeb and Alibaba in 2013; and, Alibaba acquired UCWeb in 2014.

Related: China is expected to invest up to twice as much as the US in another five years

China search engines market totaled 18.76 billion yuan (US$2.72 bn) in Q1 2017, with a decrease of 8.6% compared to Q4 2016 and an increase of 5.3% YoY.

Baidu still leads China’s search engine market in Q1 2017 with 75.88% market share by total revenues (including overseas revenues and channel revenues), followed by Google China (10.24%) and Sogou (8.41%).

Baidu’s market share is the highest at 83.93% if excluding overseas revenues and channel revenues.

Baidu had less active online marketing customers in Q1 2017, representing a 23.2% decrease from Q1 2016. But, its revenues per online marketing customer saw a 26.8% increase from Q1 2016.

China’s Mobile Search Market in Q1 2017

Baidu has 78.2% share of China’s mobile search market by the total number of mobile search queries in the first quarter of 2017, followed by Sogou and Easou.

Baidu is making efforts in China’s rising news feed advertising market, promoting a “search + recommend” model to advertisers. The news feed ad is displayed after every six news items on Baidu mobile.

Easou is a technology company based in Shenzhen; and, it focuses on mobile search and a fiction mobile app.

The top 10 Android app stores by total user coverage in China in December 2016 according to TalkingData are:

1. 360 Mobile Assistant
2. Tencent’s App Store
3. Baidu Mobile Assistant
4. Xiaomi App Store
5. OPPO App Store
6. Xiaomi Games Center
7. Huawei App Store
8. Google Play
9. Vivo Games Store
10. Vivo App Store

In comparison, another research company iiMedia data showed that the top 3 app stores by total number of active users in Q4 2016 were 360 Mobile Assistant (42.4%), Tencent App Store (34.8%), Baidu Mobile Assistant (25.1%), Wandoujia+PP Assistant (21.2%).

China has surpassed the United States as the largest market in the world for iOS App Store revenue earning over $1.7 billion in Q3 2016.

Download E-Book for details: Mobile Trend in China 2017 (CIW Premium members only)

Interbrand recently released their 2016 ranking of the Global Top Brands; Apple ranks first with $178,119 million brand value, followed by Google, Coca Cola, Microsoft, and Toyota.

Technology is, not surprisingly, the most dominant sector, with four brands in Top 10: Apple, Google, Microsoft, Samsung. It also features some of the Top Growing Brands, with Facebook (+48%) as the Top Growing Brand in 2016, followed by Adobe (21%), Huawei (18%), Samsung (14%) and SAP (+13%), and number 2 ranked Google at (+11%).

Google Play is expected to launch its China app store in March 2016, which will likely be a separate and independent version of Google Play.

Related: Does Google Play Stand A Chance in China?

Google will launch a Chinese version of the service. However, the new accounts will not link to the international version. Google Play supports Alipay instead of Paypal to cater to Chinese users.

The number of app downloads on Google Play was 100% more than that on Apple App Store in 2015 with about 40 percentage points increase compared to 2014 according to App Annie. Google Play gained more market share in 2015.

App users were more willing to spend money on apps in 2015. Although downloads of Google Play were far more than Apple App Store, revenues of Apple App Store were 75% higher than Google Play.

Users of iOS system seemed to spend more on apps. China’s market accounted for about 30% of Apple overall revenues in 2015. Google hopes to drive more paid service users through Google Play Chinese version.

Google recently released job postings on on LinkedIn to employ up to 60 people in Beijing and Shanghai. Launching a Google Play could extend the benefits for Google to Android based smart devices and games requiring Google services to play in China.

Smartphone vendor HTC is said to manufacture Google Nexus series of smartphones on behalf of Google in China and will launch one to support all telcos networks in the future.

China’s consumers are used to download free mobile apps from fixed app stores on smartphones or third-party app stores and 3.1 million smartphones have installed foreign applications .

Also read: China’s Post-95s Mobile App User Insights 2015

Active users of China’s third-party mobile application stores reached 436 million in the third quarter of 2015 increasing 1.87% compared to the previous quarter according to iiMedia.

Competition among app stores in China tended to intensify among major providers and many small and medium sized app stores managed to compete for users based on special advantages.

The number of active users of the third-party app stores increased by 1.87% to 436 million in the third quarter of 2015.

Third-party app stores (such as 360 Mobile Guard) accounted for 54.4% market share in Q3 2015, followed by smartphone vendor app stores(such as Xiaomi App Store), mobile OS app stores, and telecoms network app stores.

Qihoo 360 (360 Mobile Guard), Tencent (Myapp) and Baidu (Baidu Mobile Assistant) dominate China’s third-party app store market. Market structure of third-party mobile app stores remained stable in the third quarter this year compared to the previous several quarters. However, Google Play, who may enter China by the end of this year according to Forbes, is predicted to change the current market structure in China.

Research data of iiMedia showed that nearly two-thirds smartphone users knew Google Play but users who had once used it were less than one-fifth. With Google exiting Mainland China market, many apps couldn’t be used unless being accessed via VPN.

Among users who had used Google Play, 60.9% used to download official and original applications, 34.8% believed that domestic application stores sometimes couldn’t meet their needs, and 30.4% could download apps which were unavailable in other stores. Fast updates speed and little junk plugins were also advantages of Google Play.

Only 10.7% mobile internet users don’t support Google Play entering China according to iiMedia and 60.8% are optimistic about the future of Google Play in China’s market. Overall, China’s mobile phone users are acceptable on Google Play while whether it can achieve breakthroughs remains a question mark.

38.5% users won’t download Google Playand 24.6% will download based on feedback of others. However, 24.6% will immediately download and use when Google Play is available in China.

Quality is an important reason to attract China’s mobile app store users. Among users who may use Google Play in the future, 42.7% hope to download official and original apps, 33.3% will try to use a foreign app store, and 28.0% will use the app store for fast app update speed.

Also read: China’s Mobile Internet Insights Q1-Q3 2015

China’s search engine market in Q2 2015 reached 19.22 billion yuan (US$3.09 billion), with an increase of 25.9% QoQ and 36.9% YoY according to Analysis Research.

In Q2 2015, Baidu accounted for 79.81% of the overall market share by revenues which excluded channels revenue; Google China 10.89%, Sogou 6.34%, and the others 2.96%.

Also read: China Online Retail Exceeded $265B in H1 2015

In June 2015, Google Global still ranked the top by market share of 70.8% in the world’s search engine market with an increase of 2.26% from the previous month. Bing and Yahoo ranked the 2nd and 3rd. Compared with market structure in May, it had some difference in June’s search engine market.

Compared with Baidu’s market share in May, in June, it was replaced by Bing, ranking the 4th. Baidu’s market share decreased from 10.18% to 7.52% in June 2015.

Also read: Baidu, Sogou among Top 5 Biggest Search Engines in the World

According to ZenithOptimedia’s new report Top Thirty Global Media Owners 2015, Baidu is now the fourteenth-largest media owner in the world growing 43% YoY. In the Top 30 list, Google ranked on top, followed by Walt Disney and Comcast.

Baidu and Sohu ranked the second and fourth respectively in the world’s top 5 biggest search engines by revenue in 2014.

Related: China Top 10 Online Advertising Media in 2014

CCTV, China’s national state television company, accounts for about a quarter of China’s television ad market ranking the 20th largest media owner.

Mobile: Almost 1/3 of Online Video Ad Revenue in China in Q1 2015

eMarketer estimated that in 2015, the total spend of digital advertising in the world will exceed US$170.85 billion according to its report released on 31 March 2015. Baidu and Sohu ranked the second and fourth respectively in the top 5 biggest search engines by revenue in 2014.

According to eMarketer’s estimation, in 2015, search engine ad spend will be US$81.59 billion with an increase of 16.2% from last year. And in 2019, search engine ad’s annual growth will be nearly 10% and its transaction value will exceed US$130.58 billion.

Among all the internet companies worldwide, Google still dominates the search engine advertising market. In 2015, its search engine ad business value is expected to be over US$44.46 billion with an increase od 15.7%. It represented 54.5% market share worldwide.

Benefited from Google’s exit from China, Baidu will account for 8.8% market share in 2015, which is increased by 1.2% from 2014. In 2014, Baidu’s mobile revenue surpassed PC in December. 

Baidu has a better understanding of China market. Browser is a strategic product for internet big players like Baidu and other internet companies. Baidu offers easier way for China internet users to access Google.

China is now the second biggest search engine market, after the U.S. with a market size of US$14.9 billion. And China search engine advertising market’s growth rate will be 32.8%, which is twice than the average growth rate worldwide in 2015.

Also read: Top 6 Desktop Browsers in China in 2014

In Q4 2014, total transaction value of China search engine market was RMB16.26 billion (US$2.63 billion) with an increase of 3.7% from the third quarter. In 2014, total transaction value exceeded RMB57.14 billion (US$9.25 billion) with an increase of 45.2% YoY according to data of EnfoDesk.

According to EnfoDesk, Baidu accounted for 79.48% market share, ranking top by revenue (including revenue from overseas but excluding revenue from channels), followed by Google China (11.91%) and Sogou(5.54%) in Q4 2014 in China.

Including the revenue from overseas and channels, Baidu represented 77.3% market share; while Google China represented 10.29% in Q4 in China search engine market.

Excluding the revenue from overseas, Baidu had 85.9% market share, followed by Sogou (6.3%) and Google China (4.34%) in Q4 2014. The market share structure was different from Q3 2014 in search engine market. See the difference here.

In 2014, China search engine market was performing well. EnfoDesk believed that the growth result from advertisers’ contribution to search market advertising, as well as mobile search market’s rapid development.

In December 2014, for the first time Baidu search revenue from mobile surpassed PC. Baidu expects mobile’s monetization rate to trend up throughout year 2015.

Also read: China Mobile Search Trend 2015

eMarketer estimates that the net ad revenue of Baidu and Alibaba will account for 4.68% and 4.66% share of the worldwide digital ad market in 2014, ranking the third and fourth largest market share among the companies involved in eMarketer’s latest research.

According to eMarketer’s forecast, Tencent and Sina will collectively account for 1.21% of the worldwide digital ad market in 2014, and the total market share for these four leading China-based ad sellers will reach 10.55% in 2014.

Google and Facebook will remain as the top ad selling companies worldwide in 2014. However, Google’s net ad revenue share will decrease from 31.55% to 31.10%.

Meanwhile, in the global mobile internet ad market, the total mobile internet ad revenue is expected to be $40.20 billion in 2014.

Google and Facebook continue to dominate the global mobile ad market, they together representing nearly 60% share. Alibaba’s share of mobile internet ad dollars will increase from 1.6% in 2013 to 6.2% in 2014, while Baidu will nearly double its share from 2.6% to 5.1%.

At present, the US is leading the mobile internet advertising market, with advertisers spending nearly US$19 billion, followed by UK and Japan in 2014. eMarketer estimates that China’s mobile online display and search ad spend will exceed $2.83 billion in 2014; and, China mobile internet ad spend will exceed $12 billion in 2017.

Alibaba and Baidu have taken advantage of the rapid development of China mobile internet. China’s rapid growth in mobile internet advertising market mainly due to its large mobile user base and China’s booming economy.

Also read: China Mobile Internet Statistics 2014

Digital marketers who’s familiar with Google paid search, or PPC, may wonder how much it costs per click (CPC) on the dominating search engine in China, Baidu. Here is the a comparison of CPC in ten industries between this two search engine’s paid search service in China according to

Across most of the ten industries analyzed by Toms Insight, Baidu CPC is significantly higher than it is on Google. In our experience at Incitez, sometimes CPC could go beyond RMB100 in industries like plastic surgery. It makes sense as the market is huge and the competition is fierce.

Baidu reported total revenues of RMB11.986 billion ($1.932 billion) for Q2 2014; it has 81.7% share of China’s search engine market by revenue in Q2 according to iResearch.

Baidu Map, Gaode Map and Google Map are the top 3 mobile map apps by total number of reached users, according to EnfoDesk.

In terms of total number of app launch frequency and usage time, Baidu also dominates.

According to another Chinese research company iResearch’s first quarter data, Google Maps beat Gaode Maps in usage time in Q1 2014.

Baidu has integrated its mobile payment solution Baidu Wallet in its Maps app and it’s interesting to see how Baidu will utilize the popularity of Baidu Maps to get more mobile shopping market share.

Total revenue in Chinese search engine market reached RMB14.73 billion with a QoQ increase of 26.8% and YoY growth of 58.5%, 39.5% of which were contributed by mobile.

Chinese Search Engine Market Share by Revenue

Baidu has 81.7% share of China’s search engine market by revenue in the second quarter of 2014, followed by Google (10.9%), Sogou (3.8%), and 360 Search (2.6%) according to data from iResearch.

China mobile search advertising only represented 13.1% of total search advertising click share, according to Marin Software’s latest annual report.

As the data only covers Google Mobile which has low market share in China’s search market, the absolute value of the findings are not so useful; the trend can still be referred to.

According to our experience, the mobile CPC in China is lower than PC in many circumstances and the tablet CPC is more costly.

Marin report provided 3 tips for mobile search advertisers:

1. Positions 1 and 2 are by far the most valuable positions for ads.
   Across all devices, click-through rates drop by 50% after position 2, from roughly 5% to 2.4%
2. Ensure that all parts of their conversion path are well-optimized for mobile devices
3. Marketers should look into tracking mobile ad formats like click-to-call and store-locator

The top three mobile maps in China are Baidu Maps, Baidu Navigation and Google Maps, according to a survey conducted by Chinese research company iResearch.

The same survey revealed the top three applications of mobile maps are: looking for directions, route navigation, and searching for unknown locations.

The top  map brand is Baidu Maps, followed by Gaode Maps and Google Maps. Gaode reached an agreement with Alibaba this April and will become a wholly-owned subsidiary of Alibaba.

According to EnfoDesk, in Q1 2014, China search engine market reached 11.16 billion yuan (USD 1.81 billion). Channel revenue excluded, Baidu accounted for 79%market share by revenue, Google China accounted for 12.8%, the new Sogou (including Soso) ranked the third with 5.4%.

In Q1 2014, Baidu led the search engine market with 77.1% share (channel revenue included), Google China accounted for 11%. New Sogou (including Soso) accounted for 8.1%.

Baidu remained as the market leader in China in Q1 2014, keyword advertising was still the top priority of Chinese advertisers. Meanwhile, Baidu also improved its search engine marketing management and enhanced user experience. Revenue from mobile search also reinforced Baidu’s status in search engine market.

Google’s market share in China kept shrinking, its main revenue came steadily from helping Chinese advertisers reach overseas market.

The new Sogou (including Soso) focused on PC and mobile terminals at the same time. In PC terminal, Sogou’s traffic entrances added Tencent’s browser, QQ, etc. In mobile terminal, via QQ mobile browser and Sogou mobile browser and mobile Tencent websites and Sohu, the new Sogou’s development was promising.

According to Enfodesk’s report, in the first quarter of 2014, Baidu accounted for 32.2% China online advertising market, followed by Alibaba with 17.3% share. Google China ranked the third with 5.2% market share.

Enfodesk regarded Baidu kept its leading place in Q1 2014, Baidu’s highly competitive because of its brand effect and technology innovation. Besides product research and development, Baidu also announced verified accounts with Consumers’ Association of China to boost the healthy development of search engine ecosystem.

Alibaba’s the second largest online advertising market player in China, Alimama and its RTB advertising system became mature. Advertisers’ recognition of Alibaba’s RTB system gradually improved, Alibaba had cutting-edge advantage in RTB system.

However, Google China’s market share kept shrinking over the years. Its Q1 market share was merely 5.2%, and the difference with Tencent’s market share was decreasing. In the near future, Tencent will replace Google China to be the third advertising platform in China. Meanwhile, Qihoo 360’s performance was excellent, surpassed Youku and Tudou and narrowed its gap with Sina.

In Q1 2014, five big portal websites which are Tencent, Sohu, Sina, NetEase and ifeng together accounted for 13.5% market share. Vertical media was growing fast, video, real estate and auto were the main stream vertical media websites. In online video market, Youku and Tudou’s market share dropped to 2.3% due to seasonal factors, and other video websites such as Sohu were strong competitors of Youku and Tudou.

Alimama, an Alibaba marketing platform, held a meeting to discuss big data’s influence on marketing transform in Hangzhou on March 20 in 2014.

See Alimama’s introduction here.

According to the general manager of Alimama, it was going to build a marketing system centered on DMP (Data Management Platform) in 2014, improving enterprises’ data usability more effectively. Precision marketing brought by big data would optimize media advertising value continuously.

Alimama is the biggest open marketing platform in China. General manager Wang Hua believed Alimama could compete with Google in marketing, DMP helped Alimama achieved more than Google in the comprehensiveness of data and diversities in marketing systems.

Alimama was building the biggest marketing ecosystem in the world which would link data from online shopping, map, online community behavior, weather, mobile behavior and third-party DSP together.

It aimed at helping brands to integrate online data with offline CRM to completely monitor customer’s behavior, reaching them more precisely.

“Google does not have the advantage in big data linking,” stated by Chen Jie, Chief Analytics Officer from Acxion, “Google only has display ad and search ad big data, but it can not collect data from online shopping, daily life, and social networking. Data collected from a single medium could not help brands to solve problems.”

Case Study

In October 2013, Buick Regal analyzed consumer behavior data and favorites sharing information and found a connection point that excited consumers most. It attracted 25,000 consumers to try on Buick Regal in two weeks, hitting a new record.

Video and Wireless Will Be Main Current

In 2014, Alimama will focus on developing video and wireless resources, wireless marketing will be integrated into games, weather, food, and drink and photo apps without interfering with consumers. Alimama becomes a crucial link in Alibaba’s O2O wireless marketing plan.

Alimama wants to build a technology-driven big data marketing ecosystem, making more people use and share data, therefore, achieving media advertising value and brand marketing effect.

Released by EnfoDesk, the statistic of the “Quarterly Marketing Supervision on China’s Internet Search Engine in Q4 2013” showed that the market of China’s search engine enterprises amounted to USD 11.42 billion. The market size increased by 1.2%, compared with Q3 2013, and had a 40.3% YoY increase. In 2013, the total market of China’s search engine enterprises reached USD 39.36 billion, increasing by 36.7%, comparing with 2012.

In the market share by revenue (excluding channel revenue), Baidu accounted for 78.4% share, while Google China and Sogou (including Soso) accounted for 13.7% and 5.3% respectively.

In the market share by revenue (including channel revenue), Baidu accounted for 76.6%, followed by Google China and Sogou (including Soso) accounted for 11.8% and 8.0% respectively.

Baidu remained its leading position in China search engine market. Both its efforts on PC and mobile devices contributed to its achievements. However, Google China’s market share dropped slightly. As the competition among search engines became more fierce, what’s more, Google had been losing its product managers and IT elites in China, Google’s market share was encroached bit by bit. The merging of Soso and Sogou increased the new Sogou’s market share, benefiting from the technology and traffic sources of Tencent platforms. With an improvement on its product and marketing system, Qihu 360 began to stand out among the rest.

Generally, the search engine market kept stable with a slowdown on its growth rate. Baidu, Google and Sogou were the three major players in the current market. In the near future, Qihu 360 would take a place in the market by improving its commercial system. Compared with the stable search engine market in PC, the accelerating commercialization in mobile market will be the main trend of future search engine market. As a mature and technique-required advertising model that can bring a high ROI , search engine will continue to gain its popularity.

An astonishing info found out by BI Intelligence that Facebook had 95 million users in China (under 100 million in America), although Facebook was and still is blocked by China Great Firewall. Besides, Google+ had 100 million users in China, Twitter had 80 million and Youtube had 60 million users in China. Linkedin is the only unblocked big social network in China, which had 20 million users.

Other interesting findings by BI Intelligence was Qzone owned by Tencent had 712 million users, ranking the third in the world. It was twice of WhatsApp and three times of Twitter’s users.

The top three chat app were: WhatsApp, Line, and Wechat.

According to EnfoDesk, market scale of China advertising platforms in Q3 reached 28.77 billion yuan (USD 4.7 billion), 24.2% more than Q2 2013.

In Q3 2013, Baidu occupied 30.8% market share by revenue, and Alibaba ranked the second with 15.9%. Google came to the third place in China advertising operators with 5.5%.

China advertising market in Q3 2013 grew steadily due to the slight recover of macroeconomic and the coming of sales season. Baidu remained its leading in China advertising operators, and keyword advertising was still the top advertising choice.

Tencent, Sohu, Sina,ifeng and NetEase together occupied 14.7% market share. Portal websites had broke the traditional business model of selling ads, integrating other resources such as social network, videos, entertainment and life services.

According to EnfoDesk, China search engine market scale in Q3 2013 reached 11.28 billion yuan (USD 1.84 billion), 20.3% more than last quarter.

Baidu dominated 78.5% search engine market share by revenue (channel revenue not included), followed by Google China with 14% share. After the merge of Sogou and Soso, the new Sogou occupied 5.1% market share.

In Q3 2013, Baidu ranked top in market share by revenue (channel revenue included), with 76.9%. Google China came to the second with 12.2%, followed by Sogou with 8%.

Baidu remained its leading position in China search engine market in Q3 2013. SME could achieve effective marketing by placing ads on Baidu. Google China’s market share kept stable because Google offered enterprises a way to do advertising oversea. However, Google Chinese search and user experience hadn’t been improved, so its market share would decrease furthermore.

The merge of Soso and Sogou to become the new Sogou increased Sogou’s market share, benefiting from Tencent platfroms’ technology and traffic sources.

According to CNZZ, Baidu topped China search engine market share with 63.16%, followed by Qihoo’s 360 with 18.23%. Sogou ranked third with 10.35% market share.

In comparison with July search engine market share, Baidu had an obvious drop from 64.25% to 63.16%, while 360 had a big jump from 17.59% to 18.23%. Sogou also increased by 0.64%.

According to DCCI research, the average number of apps installed by China Android users were 29.9. As the chart shown above, 27.76% installed 10-20 apps, followed by 20-30 with 22.02%.

72% users would both use PC and mobile to install app, while 25% said they only used mobile and 3% only used PC.

Third-party app store, mobile assistant and mobile browser recommendations were the three major means to download app via mobile devices in China. And as for PC, mobile assistant, third-party app store and browser recommendations were the three major means to download app.

35% China Android users downloaded app via third-party app store, followed by internet companies with 33%. And 19% would choose download offered by mobile manufacturers. Merely 6% would choose official app download, like Google play.

China search engine Marketreached 9.28 billion yuan(1.5 billion USD) in Q2 2013, with a QoQ growth of 25.1% and a year-on-year growth of 35.3%, according to statistics released by iResearch.

China search engine market growth in Q2 was driven by three factors. First, due to seasonal factor, after the Chinese Spring Festival, search traffic was growing. Second, the number of search advertisers and ARPU  increased. Third, Qihoo’s 360 search quickly commercialized. However, the sluggish macroeconomics, saturated traffic in desktops, and mobile search revenue realization was troubling the search engine market.

Baidu dominated market with 81.4% share in Q2, followed by Google China with 13.1%. Sogou was 3.3%, and Soso 1.3%. 360 only occupied 0.8% in market share by revenue in Q2.

China online ad market in Q2, from iResearch data, reached 23.26 billion yuan (USD 3.8 billion), growing 17.4% compared to Q1 and YoY growth of 27.4%. China online ad market is entering to a steady growth stage.

In Q2, search, video, news and navigation monthly usage increased. NetEase, Taobao and eTao had more than 10% QoQ growth, Sina, Sohu and iFeng had more than 7% QoQ growth.

Search engine ads kept growing in Q2 with 36.4% online ad market share. Vertical search ads and brand banner ads dropped slightly compared to Q1, with 22.4% and 21.2% share. Video ads grow steadily with 6.7% share.

Baidu, Google and Sogou promote the grow of search engine ads, market new player Qihoo’s 360 will further push it. Vertical search ads is due to the fast growth of Taobao search, online shopping increase brings up vertical search ads. High quality video content, such as movies, TV dramas and shows boost video ads growth.

In China top 10 online ad market companies, Baidu was still the leader with 7.56 billion yuan in revenue. Taobao came to the second with 5.61 billion yuan. Taobao, Qihoo’s 360 and Sohu had grown by more than 40%.

Qihoo’s 360 main revenue comes from navigation, growing steadily. Qihoo’s search ads conversion keeps increasing. Taobao has lots of small business which provide growing need for advertisement.Sogou search engine and its video contributed to its revenue growth.

According to iResearch Q1 report, Baidu search engine market share is 80.6% (by revenue), growing steadily compared to 79.7% in last quarter. And Google shares 14.4%.

In Q1, China search engine market reached CNY7.41 billion (USD 1.21 billion), which had a year-on-year increase of 135%, but QoQ growth down by 6.8% mainly due to seasonal factors (Chinese Spring Festival) and the growing of mobile search.

For China web search requests market share in Q1 2013, Baidu remains the leader position,with 81.6% market share. Followed by 360, with 10.3%.

iResearch predicts Baidu’s market share would remain 81.2% in Q2, and 360 will increase by 0.8%.

According to Enfodesk, Baidu accounted for 30.9% of the total online ad revenue in China; Alibaba for 15.3%, and Google China for 6.2%.

According to China search engine market quarterly data in 2012 released by EnfoDesk, the China search engine leader Baidu accounted for 78.6% of the total search engine market, Google for 15.6%, while Sogou 3.1%.

In 2012, Baidu had about 78% of the search engine market share. Its growth tended to slow down since the second quarter of 2012, but kept its share to 78.6%.

Google China in the mainland market, mainly relied on export trade for its search revenue. It’s a good effective channel of the oversea marketing and promotion for China’s domestic advertisers, which also added to Google’s revenue.

Sogou’s market share kept stably increasing, and the impact of the new competitors was low. The “Chinese language input software – Brower – Search Engine” strategy proved to be successful. Sogou Input took its free platform advantage,bringing a huge amount of users together, and drove the brower download and search engine usage. Although in the latter part of the year, Qihoo 360 entered the search engine market, however not affecting the traffic of Sogou search.

On Dec 12 last week, Google officially announced its decision to close down China shopping search engine.

Previously, some media revealed that Google was going to inform its partners in China the closure of shopping search engine. Confirmation in received by Google on Dec 12.

Google’s shopping search engine was released in May 2009 to compete with local shopping search websites like Etao. Google says, the influence of shopping search engine didn’t reach the expectation, and they are planning to focus on mobile advertising products, mobile and PC advertising display, export-oriented search advertising products. Chinese merchants could still use Google Shopping to reach consumers in other markets, Google said in the statement.

This is the second time that Google shut down its service in China in recent 3 months. It was in Sep that Google announced its decision to stop its music search engine.

China search engine market reached 7.78 billion yuan (USD 1.25 billion) in Q3 2012, with the QoQ growth of 13.5% and YoY growth of 44.1%. China’s search engine market growth is slowing down as the growth rate is lower than 50% for the very first time due to a few factors:

• Affected by the macroeconomic situation, advertisers reduced their advertising budget
• Fast-growing mobile search engine took some market share
• The launch of Qihoo 360 search engine took some search volume market share while having not yet started to contribute revenue to search market

Market Share Distribution Change

In Q3 2012, Baidu’s market share increased from 79.5% to 80.3% while Google suffered a decrease to only 14.6%.

For Google, who previously powered Qihoo 360 navigation and web browser search, also suffered from 360 search engine.

According to the data provided by iResearch this July, here comes the list of China’s top 20 internet companies by total reached users in the first half of 2012. The research was based on long-term monitoring for 400,000 network behavior samples.

Recently, Aliyun and Acer cancelled the launch event for the latest smartphone. It is said that because of the obstruction from Google, the launch event had come to a temporary cancelation.

Last Tuesday, Acer made an announcement that they were going to launch a new smartphone A800 with Aliyun mobile OS. Developed by Alibaba Group, Aliyun mobile operation system beard the mission of countervailing with Google’s Android System. However, the planned launch event, which should have started on the afternoon of Sep 13, turned out to be cancelled only one hour before the start time.

Shortly afterwards, Aliyun Company made an official statement, “our cooperative partner received a notice from Google. It said that Google would break ties of its cooperation of Android and relevant technologies with Acer if Acer went ahead and installed Aliyun OS.”

In other words, Google will starve out Acer once Acer Smartphone adopted Aliyun system. At the moment, Google’s Android Operation System occupies more than 60% market share in the global mobile market. That’s why it can play such a powerful role as the obstruction against Aliyun System’s development.

Ren Zhengfei, the head of the handset business at Huawei Corp., had showed his worries in an internal presentation, “indeed, the reason why we develop terminal operation system is out of the strategic need. So we can have the substitutes once the main producers starve us out.” From what he said, we can anticipate a phenomenon that most hand-set vendors are in search for substitutes in case of emergency, from which Alibaba sees room for home-grown operation system like Aliyun.

Though occupying more than 60% market share, Google’s leading role isn’t safe at all. While Windows Phone is the most obvious competitor, other lesser-known platforms such as Aliyun are also drawing attention.

Aliyun expects the number of smartphone manufacturers using Linux-based Aliyun to increase to five by the end of this year from the current two: Beijing Tianyu Communication Equipment Co., whose phones are sold under its K-Touch brand, and the major home appliances maker Haier Electronics Group Co.. Acer is the third one.

Alibaba, who operates 2 popular shopping websites Taobao and Tmall, provides its Aliyun with advantages like the integration of the online payment. Also, according to a report by the BCG, China already has 193 million online shoppers, more than 170 million in the U.S. Taobao and Tmall are expecting to host one trillion yuan ($157.6 billion) in transactions this year. Taken this into consideration, we can see the potential of Aliyun as well as the ambition of Alibaba Group.

Analysis International, a China Internet research company, released search engine market data for the first quarter in 2012. Total revenue in Q1 has grown by 70.4% (YoY) to 5.53 billion yuan (USD$877 million) though it’s dropped by 4.7% compared to the previous quarter.

Baidu’s Q1 earnings surged 76% as the Chinese Internet search giant’s revenue continued to surge. Baidu posted a profit of 1.88 billion Chinese yuan ($299 million), or CNY5.38 (85 U.S. cents) per ADS, up from CNY1.07 billion, or CNY3.06 an ADS, a year earlier.

Besides a Chinese painting showing a willow and a poem, you will also see an animation. If you click on the white space, as far as it’s not a link on the SERPs, the animation of a fish jumping out of a pond will appear.

Click the above image to view a large one

Total revenue of China search engine market last year reached 18.78 billion yuan, up 11.7% from 2010. Baidu leads search engine market with a market share of 76.1% by revenue while Google’s down to 19.8%. Sogou and Soso expanded their market share to 2.3% and 1.4% respectively.

China web search requests amounted to 77.51 billion times in Q3 2011, up 6.1% from Q2 and 16.3% from Q3 2010 according to research company iResearch.

Baidu’s search market share by revenue has gone up by 77.7% from previous quarter in Q3 2011. And, Google China’s market share is gradually reduced, a further decline of 1% compared with Q2. Market share of other search engine brands, such as Sogou and Soso, increased to varying degrees.

While ostensibly there to help visitors navigate the web, the evolution of the Chinese Internet has turned this otherwise benign footer element into a commodity bought and sold by savvy web entrepreneurs and shifty SEO consultants for their own gain and to the detriment of the Chinese Internet as a whole.

While it’s easy to blame shortcomings in the algorithms, a more well-rounded explanation for their persistence is a fundamental attribution error by search engines toward an individual expression that doesn’t deliver the same utility when applied to China.

Search engines are prone to see “friendly links” as paid links, fraudulent votes in an otherwise natural election of how people link to each other on the web.

Scores of PhDs and very bright engineers work tirelessly to recognize and rid their indexes of this scourge of paid links – otherwise, searchers wouldn’t know who to trust, who to listen to, and have a sickening feeling that all the blue links being waved in their face are being manipulated.

The quality and impartiality of search results are of utmost importance lest searchers switch engines. “The goal is always the same: improve the user experience,” says Udi Manber, VP of engineering at Google in charge of Search Quality. “This is not the main goal, it is the only goal.”

Search engine algorithms, with slight differences, are based on the notion that the quality and quantity of links, in combination with lesser signals, determine if and when a site should rank for a given search query. Although the easiest way to get links is simply to buy them, this is universally against search engine guidelines and those caught buying or selling links risk a penalty.

Search engines operating in China must overcome yet another obstacle: the impact of collectivist culture. Baidu and Google both got their start in America, an individualistic culture, indexing and ranking web pages written by and with links to and from Americans – Baidu in New Jersey at IDD Information Services and Google for a Ph.D. thesis at Stanford.

The essence behind their algorithms is that the importance of a web page can be determined by counting its number of citations, or backlinks. In other words, the more people talk about a web page, the more useful it must be for whatever anchor text they used in their link.

The Chinese, however, express opinions and transmit word-of-mouth differently than Americans, whose link graph and algorithms Baidu and Google are both based on. Despite Baidu’s dominant market share and Google’s valiant effort, neither search engine in China has overcome the deficiencies in their algorithm to make sense of the link graph in a collectivist culture.

Motivational factors and social benefits play an important role in self-expression online and the likelihood to link. In individualistic cultures like the US, writing about something online is often a means of gaining attention and showing connoisseurship.

Americans talk about something to reinforce their self-concept. On the contrary, members of collectivist cultures like China are under the high pressure of the group and are less likely to write about something online to gain attention and praise, even about something they generally like and are knowledgeable about.

For stuff they don’t like, there’s risk of shame in bringing it up and little social benefit for breaking the social hierarchy just to express your subjectivity. Compare the case of Mr. Chow of New York v. Ste. Jour Azur S.A. in America to that of this food blogger in Taiwan.

In the former, the court said “Mr. Chow could prove that the reviewer’s personal tastes are bizarre and his opinions unreasonable, but that does not destroy their entitlement to constitutional protection”, while the latter ended in detention, fines, and a stern warning to other opinionated bloggers.

Furthermore, members of collectivist cultures are more likely to attribute positive and negative outcomes equally to themselves rather than a service provider.

There’s subsequently less impulse to post something online about an experience since there are no strong feelings toward the service provider either way (as they’re in the same collective).

The graph below is from a Kansas State University study showing how Koreans, who are also collectivist, and Americans, individualists, reacted to getting a great deal vs. being overcharged for airline tickets.

Koreans are more likely to feel “meh” toward an experience so aren’t likely to recount it publicly online.

Citations then are not the best way for search engines to look at the relative importance of web pages in collectivist cultures. The differences in the American and Chinese link graphs can best be witnessed through the linking patterns surrounding the topic of wine.

Knowledge of a bottle of wine can tell others that you are a person of sophistication and good taste, or that you are pretentious and waste your energy discussing a drink – that is, wine often elicits strong responses.

The top websites in the US and China for wine-related keywords, winelibrary.com and yesmywine.com respectively, demonstrate the effects of collectivist culture on the Chinese link graph and the consequences for the individualistic-biased search engines.

Links to winelibrary.com come from social media, blogs, and news websites, while yesmywine.com gets its links rather furtively from directories and “friendly links” in footers.

While both websites have enough high-authority links to boost them near the top for wine-related search queries in their respective countries, getting there took them down completely different paths.

Search engine algorithms work best for people like Gary Vaynerchuk, the man behind winelibrary.com, who exudes a charismatic outgoing personality and finds himself popular with lots of people linking to his site.

American society highly values those who are loud, fast, and active in most settings, and search engines – invented in America – reflect that. Chinese SEOs and website owners find they must re-arrange their world to put themselves in front of you.

Attaining top rankings can be seen as a race to get the most people riled up about your site from other sites, so to overcome the problem of Chinese netizens not expressing themselves online and linking like those in the West, link building in China through directories, paid links, and other low key methods of obtainment will persist.

Website owners with the deepest pockets for paid links consequently have the greatest odds of top rankings. With the current bias of the algorithms and rampant manipulation, it’s impossible to know if the search results returned to you are really the most relevant pages.

Burberry launched its first luxury social retail store, empowered by WeChat

This is a guest post by Doug Pierce, the Co-Founder and Head of Research at Digital Due Diligence, a boutique Internet equity analysis firm.