China Search Engine Survey Report 2008 Released

Baidu Market Share Slightly Slips While Managing Great Lead over Google

【Beijing, September 16, 2008】 China IntelliConsulting Corp. (CIC) has published its annual survey report on China search engine market. The report shows Baidu has seen its market share slightly dropped for the first time in the three major cities of Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou to 60.9% from 61.8% in the past 12 months. Google has managed to keep its market share unchanged, whereas Yahoo has been further marginalized. Baidu is much more pervasive across all the other 15 cities of the first and second tiers in China, with a market share of 69.7%, whereas Google accounts for just 18.0%. In the Three Major Cities: Baidu and Yahoo China Dropping, Google Unchanged, Sogou Rising According to the CIC survey results, under search engine user’s daily usage definition, Baidu accounts for 60.9% of market share in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou combined, dropped from 61.8% a year ago. Google accounts for 27.0%, remains almost unchanged. Yahoo has further dropped to a marginal 2.4% while Sogou, SOHU’s search engine brand, has managed to rise to 3.1% from 2.2% a year ago.
Regional Market Shares For the 2008 search engine user survey, CIC increased its survey coverage from urban inhabitants in just the 3 major cities to a total of 18 1st- and 2nd- tier cities across China. The 18 cities can be categorized as four major groups (with Shenyang left out):   1.National Hub Cities: The three major cities of Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou   2.The Coastal Cities: Dalian, Tianjin, Qingdao, Nanjing, Hangzhou, Xiamen, and Shenzhen   3.The Central Provincial Capital Cities: Shijiazhuang, Zhengzhou, Wuhan, and Changsha   4.The Western Regional Hub Cities: Chongqing, Chengdu and Xi’an The first group, The National Hub Cities, represents the most wired cities in China, with Internet penetration rate of about 50% of total population. The second, third and fourth groups represent city inhabitants of different levels of economic development, descending from coastal East to inland Central and West. However, the three Western regional hub cities weigh higher than 3 of the 4 central provincial capital cities both in population size and economic power. The 18 cities combined have a total urban population of more than 100 million with Internet penetration rate of 40%, accounting for about 20% of China’s total Internet population and 25%of China’s total GDP, according to CIC estimate.
Google has lower brand awareness and accounts for less market share in Central provincial capital cities and Western hub cities than in the three major cities of Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou. Google’s market share in China’s rural areas is even less than 10%. Google Is the Better Search Engine in User Evaluation Among those users who use both Baidu AND Google at least once a week, which account for 20.9% of total searchers in the 18 cities, 34.6% believe Google is better than Baidu in terms of search result relevancy, 29.0% believe the opposite, while 36.4% believe they are equally good. Overall, there are more Google believers than Baidu believers.
SINA Is the Most Frequently Visited Website for Non-Search Purposes CIC China Search Engine Survey Report 2008 reveals that SINA ranks the first among the most frequently visited Websites by the Internet users in the 18 cities surveyed, followed by Netease and SOHU.
Three-Quarter of Online Shoppers Went to Taobao for Shopping

One-third (33.1%) of total Internet users in the 18 cities have shopped online at least once in the first 8 months of 2008, three-quarter (75.9%) of which went to Taobao for shopping. 80.2% shoppers say they would go directly to shopping websites when they had something on mind for online shopping, and most of them would use shopping websites’ internal search functions when necessary. Chinese Internet Users Spend More Time Online Than Watching TV
Almost two-third (63.4%) of total Internet users in the 18 cities say they spend more time online than watching TV when they stay at home. And 91.3% of total Internet users say they spend more time online than watching TV in their non-work hours. ******** CIC China Search Engine Survey Report 2008 combines all the results from the three annual surveys conducted over the period of 2006-2008 by China IntelliConsulting Corp., with statistical analyses and historical comparisons in user demographic, brand awareness and recognition, market dynamics, online behavior, attitude and satisfaction, and household structure and family income distribution of Internet users in the 18 cities. For further inquiry on CIC China Search Engine Survey Report 2008, please contact: