iResearch Report: Baidu extends its lead

Jianghuai Morning report, leading internet research company iResearch released annual Chinese search egnine report of 2005. We interviewed CEO of iResearch Weiqing Yang regarding the latest result.

Yang indicated that "in areas of web page search, music search, and image search, Baidu is leading significantly in user traffics". Baidu has extended it's lead in 2005. However, the future competition will be fierce in the Chinese internet search market. "It will be a three-horse race for the next three years".

The report indicated that, comparing with 2004, "the most commonly used search engine" category has changed dramatically. Baidu jumped to 56.6%, Google gained slightly to 32.8%, while Yahoo dropped sharply to 6.1%.

Yang said that, Baidu's has rapidly gained market share. specifically, "Web search was about 53% of it's total traffic, music search was about 15%, image search was about 13%. Baidu's web page searches has reached 24% of total searches done nationally. Currently, web page search marketing has the most visible and most profitable model as well as being the main revenue source of search engines. So, leading in this area will provide critical firepower for further growth of Baidu's businesses".

Feb 16, 2006 http://www.hf365.com