After Sogou announced that its traffic had temporarily surpassed Google, 360 and Tencent unexpectedly announced their efforts in the search engine market on the same day, challenging Baidu, which has long occupied the position of China's Internet search engine leader. Other domestic Internet giants are also targeting segments of the search market, and a war to seize the search engine market is going on. However, while the giants are busy grabbing the search market, each company also has shortcomings and shortcomings that need to be improved. At the same time, the industry is optimistic about the field of community-based vertical search. It can be seen that vertical search may become the future development direction of search.
Social networking sites seize search engine market
Recently, Tencent Senior Executive Vice President Li Haixiang said that Tencent will increase its R&D investment in Tencent Soso and will invest an additional 1 billion yuan in Tencent’s search business next year. Also coveting Baidu is Baidu’s old rival Qihoo 360. Recently, Qihoo 360 announced its entry into the search field. Baidu's position as the search engine leader is being challenged. Five years ago, Baidu and Google could be said to dominate the world, and they were two well-known Internet companies specializing in search business. But now the situation has quietly changed. The leader of traditional Internet search engines has been challenged by many parties. In just two weeks, two local search engine companies have announced that they have surpassed Google in China and have begun to The target is pointed at Baidu, the local search engine leader.
Recently, Tencent Sosou launched a massive Ninetowns brand promotion plan. CTO Xiong Minghua publicly stated that nearly 1 billion yuan will be invested in research and development in 2012. As Tencent has the largest number of Internet users in China, Ma Huateng has previously said that Tencent will tailor an online life industry model for users to meet their needs at all levels, among which online search belongs to the level of "information transmission and knowledge acquisition". To meet the most basic needs of users.
Zhou Hongyi of Qihoo 360 also said that 360 will not plagiarize and will not conduct a search exactly like Baidu. 360 will launch a "vertical search" service in conjunction with the browser. The so-called vertical search is a professional search engine for a certain industry, that is, it provides related services with certain value and information for a specific group of people, specific fields or specific needs.
In recent times, other domestic Internet giants have also targeted segments of the search market. In addition to Tencent and 360, Alibaba launched Yitao, a shopping and price comparison search service last year; Jack Ma said at this year's Internet Business Conference that Alibaba launched Yitao "just to keep Baidu awake." Sina has also recently launched an independent page for Weibo search in an attempt to seize the opportunity in the Weibo search field. Sogou, which has been active in the search market for many years, achieved profitability for the first time in the third quarter of this year, becoming the second profitable Chinese search engine company after Baidu.
According to data released by a third-party monitoring agency, Google’s Chinese search engine’s domestic market share continued to decline in the third quarter of this year, down 1% from the previous quarter. Internet analyst Li Zhongcun pointed out that the overall market size of domestic search engines continues to maintain a rapid upward trend, and the market shares of Sogou and Soso have increased to varying degrees. In addition, Baidu's current services have been repeatedly criticized by the market and users, so Sosou and Sogou both hope to take advantage of the opportunity to get a piece of the pie. Hu Yanping, general manager of DCCI Internet Data Center, said that Baidu may "possibly decline" in the future due to the development of mobile Internet and e-commerce. The giants are actively seizing the search market segment, which may revive this once peaceful field.
Behind the surge in the search market, each company still has hidden shortcomings to be filled.
Although the giants are busy seizing the search engine market, each company also hides its shortcomings that need to be made up for.
For 360, it faces continued pressure on performance after its listing. The latest third-quarter financial report shows that 360's most important revenue comes from online advertising, generated by its website navigation, most of which comes from e-commerce. In particular, the craze in the group buying market, which previously accounted for a large part of 360's advertising, is gradually receding. For 360, it is imperative to develop new businesses and new models. More importantly, 360 products have now covered the vast majority of domestic Internet users. There will be limited space for navigation station traffic growth in the future, and the number of advertising spaces on navigation stations is relatively fixed, making it difficult to support rapid revenue growth.
Tencent seems to be facing the above dilemma as well. Tencent’s financial report for the second quarter of this year shows that due to the slowdown in the growth rate of China’s Internet user base, the highest number of concurrent online accounts of Tencent’s core business QQ has declined quarter-on-quarter for the first time since its listing in 2004. This also means that the core pillar of the “Penguin Empire” QQ growth is slowing down, and Tencent is in urgent need of new businesses to support future growth.
Li Haixiang said that Tencent has consciously developed from 2C to 2B. However, how to convert huge user traffic into monetization in the 2B field is a question that Tencent must consider. "Search is a tool for Tencent to intervene to transfer traffic to corporate customers for monetization." .
Tencent is facing the test of converting 2C user traffic into 2B traffic. 360 Future Navigation Station has limited space for traffic growth, and the navigation station has a relatively fixed number of advertising spaces, which is difficult to support the rapid growth of revenue. Although both parties have various problems, But in the face of community search, a new profit growth space, neither 360 nor Tencent will give up easily. However, compared with these two companies that are eager to try, Baidu, which has already occupied 70% of the market, appears to be "calm". Some industry analysts pointed out that in a short period of time, because the new business model will not immediately show results, the completion of the technology , market, and user reserves are closely deploying and implementing the strategic deployments made some time ago. In addition, Tencent Soso only has a market share of about 1%. In comparison, Baidu will still occupy a relatively stable market position, but the new The changes have occurred irreversibly, and these new trends deserve Baidu’s attention. Hong Bo, a senior Internet commentator, believes that compared with Tencent, 360’s user loyalty is not high. Although Tencent has a stable user base and social search has gradually become popular, the search engine market threshold has always been very high. Without obvious market share advantages, it is difficult to challenge Baidu's leadership position.
Communityization, socialization, and verticalization will become the future development direction
Currently, subtle changes are taking place on the Internet: the time and frequency of people's stay on social networks are gradually surpassing the time and frequency of their use of search engines. Undoubtedly, Internet companies such as Baidu, Tencent, and 360 are sensitively sensing this subtle change. In foreign countries, social search has formed an important development trend. Just before that, Internet users around the world spent more time on Facebook than on Google.
Since Qihoo 360 announced its entry into the search engine market on the 17th, 360 Chairman Zhou Hongyi claimed that 360 will not imitate Baidu in traditional search, but will make more attempts in the field of vertical search. In Zhou Hongyi's view, as user needs become increasingly personalized, the demand for vertical search in different fields will be very strong, and this may be the direction of future search. According to 360, traditional search engines seem to be declining, so this time 360 will focus on vertical search for specific groups of people and industries, rather than traditional search similar to Baidu, and will also add the search recommendation business model. .
It is understood that the current needs for finding information and online shopping, watching online videos, buying air tickets, and checking lottery tickets are very different in terms of information media and presentation methods, and it is difficult for a general search engine to cover everything. In this regard, industry insiders pointed out that Tencent currently covers web pages, pictures, music, forums, Weibo, games, e-commerce and other fields. 360 is also in e-commerce, games, group buying, film and television, novels, music, lottery and other verticals. The field is fully blooming, which means that the future vertical search war will become more intense after the two giants enter.
Dong Xu, an analyst at Analysys International, said that on the one hand, as search engine operators continue to improve their products, user experience has been improved and traffic has continued to increase, which has also led to advertisers' gradual recognition of the keyword advertising market. promote. On the other hand, as vertical websites and traditional enterprises connect to the Internet, that is, the Internet layout of traditional offline businesses, advertisers’ demand for vertical search has also increased. The development of vertical businesses has also made advertisers more diversified in advertising. .
But we should see that truly occupying the market and occupying the market for a long time does not mean that the number of users is enough. Although the number of users is also a very important aspect, the quality of domestic searches is still different from that of foreign countries in terms of user experience. The gap is also an important aspect for us to improve qualitatively in the future.