Summary of Search Market in China

May 8, 2006. Today, tech.163.com published iResearch's 2005 summary on search market in China in three parts:

Part 1: Search Engine Usage

In this figure, it showes the market share in search engine usage in China in 2005
Baidu: 46.5%
Google 26.9%
Yahoo 15.6%
Sohu 2.7%
The rest 8.3%

Part 2 Search Engine Popularity

The popularity figure lists the most frequently used search engines
Baidu: 87.5%
Google: 65.9%
Yahoo: 26.4%
Sohu: 15.1%
Netease 10.6%
QQ: 9.8%
Sina: 8.2%
Zhongsou: 3.0%
Tom.com: 2.9%
China.com: 2.0%
Others: 0.7%

Part 3: Search Market Revenues

This part showes the monetization result of search marketing in China
Yahoo: 26.9%
Baidu: 26.0%
Google: 14.4%
Sohu: 10.6%
Sina: 6.7%
Zhongsou: 5.8%
Netease: 3.8%
The rest: 5.8%

The are some interesting points from these graphs.

First, Baidu has gained commanding lead in both usage and popularity reach. However, Baidu's monetization on search is still very limited.

Secondly, the data pretty much prove Google CEO Eric Schmidt's remark that the China market is up for grabs. In such a short time, from Aug to Dec. 2005, Google has grabbed 14.4% of the market share in revenues in China which is quite remarkable.

Finally, Charles Zhang's investment in Sogou is going down the drain.

Chinese links: 1 2 3