While Google is the behemoth throughout most of the world, China is definitely not amongst the countries with high Google usage. In fact, Google ranks fifth of all the search engines in China, and held just 3 percent of search market share in June.
While Google is the behemoth throughout most of the world when it comes to search engine traffic and search share, China is definitely not amongst the countries with high Google usage. In fact, Google ranks fifth of all the search engines in China, and held just 3 percent of search market share in June, according to the latest data from Chinese Internet analytics company CNZZ.
Surprisingly, it isn’t a case of Google simply trying to break into a competitive market. Google is in fact losing search share in the country regularly.
In March it slipped from fourth to fifth. And when compared to June 2012, usage has declined by nearly a full percentage point when compared to June 2013 numbers.
Google currently only holds 2.13 percent of search traffic page views. However, Google left the Chinese search market back in 2010, so the decline isn’t that surprising since they are no longer active in the space.
Interestingly, Baidu, which is the powerhouse for Chinese search, has also dropped its share, surprisingly losing their share to a brand-new search engine that launched less than a year ago. Qihoo, which was launched as a direct competitor for Baidu jumped to the number two search engine in China, now holding 16.58 percent of the share (15.26 percent of pageviews). Baidu’s market share is now slightly under 66 percent, (69 percent of pageviews, down from a high of 81.6 percent the year prior, according to Tech in Asia).
Rounding out the top five is Sogou in third with 8.83 percent of the traffic share (9.27 percent market share), and Soso with 3.4 percent of traffic (3.9 percent market share) in fourth.