Not surprisingly, the Nasdaq-listed Chinese search giant has clinched the second spot, according to a report released by comScore a US-based Internet marketing research company. The leading search engine in China has topped Yahoo, grabbing a search engine market share of 6.9% with a gain of half of a percentage point in a month-over-month comparison. Tailing behind are Yahoo and Microsoft, taking 6.5% and 2.3% respectively. comScore’s data show that Google dominates the global search activities, holding a steady 68.9% of the world’s search engine market.
With over 300 million Internet users, Google’s market share in China shrunk a bit, while that of its Chinese equivalent, Baidu, managed to get larger by taking more search volume. Baidu’s market share in the Chinese search engine arena rose to 75.7% in the second quarter of this year, representing a gain of 1.6 percentage points from the previous quarter. Meanwhile, market share of Google.cn fell to 19.8% from 20.9% during the same period, the Chinese consulting firm iResearch said recently.
One of the main reasons why Baidu’s international search engine market share is on the upward trend is probably because the number of Chinese users is growing at an exponential growth, all thanks to its rapid development and growing economy. However, the recent crucial Microsoft-Yahoo deal will boost either one of the companies’ growth and may even beat Baidu in the long run. On the other hand, Google continues to rule the search market in the world.
In China, Google is popular mainly among some urban Chinese users, while users in China’s rural areas almost always turn to Baidu. Some users go to Google for searches in English but switch to Baidu for searches in Chinese.