bing

Chinese search engine Baidu announced a few weeks ago that it signed an agreement with Microsoft Bing.

Baidu-Bing deal

According to the partnership between the two companies, Bing will provide English search results for Baidu.

The terms of the agreement between Baidu and Bing were not disclosed. However, the cooperation will likely work similarly to the Bing-Yahoo agreement signed last year where both companies share the revenues from search engine ads.

Most Chinese Internet users agree to say that Google’s English-language search results are currently more accurate than Baidu. Yet, Baidu service will likely be improved by the partnership with Microsoft.

More than 10 million search queries (in English) are made on Baidu every day, most of them coming from professionals and students. However, this number is not so high compared to the 477 million users claimed by Baidu. 

Baidu and Bing will help each other 

It has actually been more than a year that Microsoft has searched a search engine partner in China.

Baidu seems the best choice as it is the uncontested search engine leader in China (see search engine market share in China). 

Since Google decided to redirect its mainland users to Google Hong Kong, Microsoft has been trying to develop Bing’s market share in China. Until now, one cannot say that it was very successful since Google still detains 11% of market share and Bing only 1%.

Due to the size of China’s Internet market (more than 485 million Chinese netizens in June 2011 according to CNNIC), every search engine strives to get a slice of the cake. In addition to Baidu, Google and Bing, main competitors include Soso and Sogou.

At the same time, the Baidu-Bing deal is also a good opportunity for Baidu to team up with a multinational company that can help it in an international development. Indeed, the Chinese firm has never hidden its willingness to expand abroad.

While waiting for the Baidu-Bing service to go live (end of this year), this piece of news is a good opportunity for you to check your SEO for Baidu and your SEO for Bing.

The Microsoft Network (MSN) has launched its advertising platform adCenter in China.

Microsoft adCenter targets Chinese exporters

The US Internet giant says it wants to target Chinese exporters willing to advertise overseas. Microsoft adCenter helps businesses advertise online such as on Microsoft's Bing search engine.

The service will earn profits via selling English key words to Chinese companies. These key words, once purchased, appear on search results of Bing, MSN's portal websites, Wall Street Journal, and some famous social networking sites (SNS) like Facebook.

Currently, Microsoft adCenter operates in the US, Canada, UK, France, and Singapore. Microsoft hopes revenue from the pay-per-click ads will account for half of MSN China's business in the future.

Google vs. Microsoft, battle of China

By launching adCenter in China, Microsoft clearly wants to grab market share from rival Google.

In January, Google said it would not filter its content according to Chinese regulation, and threatened to pull out of the country. It later shut down its Chinese site google.cn, redirecting  mainland users to its unfiltered site in Hong Kong.

In July, following its standoff with Beijing over filtering search results, Google cut ties with two major Chinese advertising agencies, namely Universal Internet Media and Xi'an Weihua Network.

Google's advertising platform AdWords accounts for about 20% of China's online market. Contrary to Baidu which dominates the market, Bing has a tiny market share, that is why Microsoft looks for a search engine partner in China.

Here is a list of popular search engines in China:

• Baidu

Baidu is by far the leading Chinese search engine for websites, audio files and images. It was established in 2000 by co-founders, Robin Li and Eric Xu.

• Google China

Founded in 2005, Google China ranks as the No. 2 search engine in China. In March 2010, it decided to redirect all queries from Chinese users to Google Hong Kong.

• Sogou

Sogou is a search engine which can search text, images, music, and maps. Launched in 2004, it is owned by China's No. 2 Internet portal Sohu but Alibaba Group is going to buy shares. Sogou means "Search Dog" in Chinese.

• Soso

Soso is a Chinese search engine owned by Tencent which is well known for its IM QQ.

• China Yahoo!

• Bing

Bing is Microsoft's search engine. Bing's official Chinese name is "bì yìng" which literally means "very certain to respond" or "very certain to answer".

• Youdao

Youdao is a search engine released by Chinese Internet company NetEase in 2007. It is the featured search engine of its parent company's web portal, 163.com, and lets users search for web pages, images, news, music, blogs, etc. Youdao roughly translates as “there's a way”.

Do you know other search engines used in China?

This post contains market shares for search engines in the world and several countries including the US, China, Japan and South-Korea. Data provided by comScore is based on “expanded search” definition, which includes searches not only conducted on the core search engines.

Search engine market share - worldwide

Google Sites ranked as the top search site worldwide with 87.8 billion searches in December 2009, or almost 67 percent of the global search market. Yahoo! Sites ranked second globally with 9.4 billion searches, followed by Chinese search engine Baidu with 8.5 billion searches.

Microsoft Sites reached 4.1 billion searches, on the strength of its successful introduction of new search engine Bing. Russian search engine Yandex also achieved considerable gains, growing to 1.9 billion searches.

Search engine market share - US

In January 2009, Google Sites led with 11.7 billion searches, representing almost 59 percent of the US search market. Yahoo! Sites ranked second with nearly 3 billion searches, followed by Microsoft Sites (1.2 billion) and AOL (781 million).

Search engine market share - Europe

In March 2008, Europeans conducted almost 25 billion searches. Google Sites holds the leading position with more than 19 billion searches conducted, representing 79 percent of the European search market. Google’s top position was followed by eBay, which accounted for 3.1 percent of European searches. Russian search portal Yandex ranked third with 2.2 percent search market share, slightly ahead of Yahoo! Sites at 2.0 percent and Microsoft Sites at 1.9 percent.

Search engine market share - China

The Chinese conducted almost 11 billion searches in July 2008. The leader of the market is the Chinese search engine Baidu, far ahead of Google (see our recent article showing that Google's loss is Baidu's gain in China). Other players such as Soso and Sogou try to gain market share but aren't very successful. 

Search engine market share - Japan

Yahoo! Sites led the search ranking in Japan with 3.5 billion searches in January 2009, followed by Google Sites with 2.6 billion searches and Rakuten with 153 million searches.

Search engine market share - South Korea

In April 2009, 3.4 billion searches were conducted in South Korea. NHN Corporation, which includes Naver.com, led the search market with 2.1 billion searches conducted on its sites (62 percent search market share), followed by Daum with 680 million searches (20 percent) and Google Sites with 251 million searches (7 percent).

If you have more up-to-date data about search engine market share, notably in Asian countries, feel free to share it with us.