Imagine you're sitting in front of your laptop and want to search for something in China. Since you can't reach Google, you turn to the Chinese search engine giant: Baidu.
To prove that Baidu is the undisputed king of search engines in China, many kenya phone number data colleagues would point to Statcounter as a source. However, we don't do this – and there's a reason for that:
Fig. 1: Market shares of the desktop search engine landscape according to Statcounter January 2021 to April 2023. Image source: Statcounter / edited
In May 2023, Statcounter crowned Bing the new superstar with over 50% market share for desktop searches. Second place came from the Russian search engine Yandex, which is said to be well on its way to overtaking Baidu. But can this be true?
Fig. 2: Market shares of the mobile search engine landscape according to Statcounter January 2021 to April 2023. Image source: Statcounter / edited
Market observers in China could only wonder how Statcounter could spread such “fake news.”
The answer: Statcounter's data in China is based only on the data of a tiny, non-representative number of websites that use its analytics app. This is simply too small to provide meaningful information about China. Much more reliable sources here are the statements of experts who live and work in China. Marcus Pentzek, Director of SEO at the service provider Jademond Digital in Tianjin, was able to provide us with more reliable insights: According to his information, which – after prior consent – is based on customer data from their analytics tools, Baidu is still the king of traditional web searches for websites. However, Bing has certainly carved out a niche for itself in desktop searches and is particularly relevant for B2B searches. Some of Jademond Digital's B2B clients receive around 10% of their visitors in China via Bing.
In the B2C sector, however, things are different. Here, many users enter their searches directly into the product search engines of Tmall, Taobao, and JD, or into social networks such as WeChat and Douyin.
The Chinese online ecosystem behaves differently, with its own rules, its own stars, and its own habits. In general, however, we can say that Baidu is of great importance, especially for B2B companies looking to gain a foothold in China.