Google Challenged by Baidu In Asia
It’s no secret that Google is the undisputed king of search in the states, as well as in many other markets worldwide. So, it might be surprising to some that Google’s search throne has a big challenger in the Asia-Pacific region, according to the latest comScore qSearch 2.0 numbers.
comScore’s figures indicate that Google led the region’s search rankings in July with 33.5% of all searched conducted during the month, or almost 9.1 billion searches. However, China’s Baidu was not far behind with a 27.4% share in the same month, which means that the search engine handled 7.4 billion searches.
The 6.1% difference reflects a very slight margin of victory for Google, compared to its more dominating market share figures in the U.S. In August, comScore reported that Google grabbed a hold of 63.0% of the U.S. search market, followed by Yahoo! with 19.6%.
In the Asia-Pacific region, Yahoo! was third with 19.7%, followed by Korea’s NHN Corporation with 4.6% of the market. China’s Alibaba handled 3.0% of the market, followed by China’s TENCENT with 1.9%.
Microsoft lagged behind with 1.7%, followed by Lycos with 1.5%, and Sohu with 1.1%.
In terms of unique searchers and total searches during July, China led both with 143.5 million searchers who conducted 11.0 billion searches during the month. Japan was second with 61.1 million searchers conducting 6.2 billion searches during July.
While India was third in terms of unique searchers (23.4 million), Korea was third in terms of total searches (2.1 billion), thanks in large part to its highly engaged audience. Korea’s 20.4 million searchers carried out 102.8 searches each, followed by Australia’s 8.4 million searchers who conducted 102.0 searches each during July.
The Asia-Pacific region is of major importance to all parties involved. Microsoft can’t be pleased with its lackluster showing in the region, but the company probably has virtually no way of improving its standing among such strong, local giants.
The region is also a trailblazer for all things mobile, which is also of huge importance for search engines. Whoever can land a strong lead in traditional search stands a good chance to do the same in the mobile realm.
Sources:
http://www.comscore.com/press/release.asp?press=2473
http://www.comscore.com/press/release.asp?press=2476
