China SEO Blog

Netease (网易), mostly known for its popular web portal 163.com, has launched a new search engine, yodao.com. The NYSE-listed company said that it has taken 100 technicians and over a two and half years period to create the new search engine. The objective is to become the No1 search engine in China within a five years period, which is rather optimistic to say the least, considering that Baidu seems to have locked the top position for many years now, with Google trailing at the second place with less than a quarter of the market.

Netease has had a partnership with Google before, with Google being the search engine used on its portal. Now Yodao search bar has been prominently placed near the top of 163.com.

Considering the reach of 163.com and the company’s other internet properties, the new search engine should be in the China top 10 search engines right from the beginning, and has a shot to make the top 5 with proper development and promotion. China is bound to become the largest internet market in a near future, and there is definitely a room for new search engines. But it would be extremely surprising to see yodao.com threatens Google China at the No2 spot or even come close to Baidu any time soon, the two companies being more focused on search and having plenty of resources and years of expertise ahead of the newcomer.

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InterActiveCorp (IAC)’s CEO Barry Diller has announced that the group flagship search engine, Ask.com, will enter the Chinese market within the next two years. The group plans to invest 100 million dollars in the middle kingdom expansion with the hope to become a major player in the country’s highly competitive search industry.

Ask is ranked fourth in the US (behind Google, Yahoo and Live/MSN). But if Google hasn’t been able to beat rival Baidu, while Yahoo and Microsoft are struggling with tiny yet decreasing market shares, what strategy will enable Ask to make it in China and surpass local players lead by Baidu?

An acquisition strategy seems probable as it would be hard to imagine Ask to start from scratch. Maybe Ask would take a look at Sina’s iask.com, due to name similarities and the fact that iask (爱问 in Chinese) is already well known as a search engine in China (although not one of the top tier or even second tier engines)? iask.com results are currently powered by Google.

A whois search has revealed that ask.cn and ask.com.cn are currently owned by a Beijing company called 北京国网信息有限责任公司. ask.cn is currently parked with sedoparking while ask.com.cn redirect to www.u.cn ; someone is about to get seriously rich….

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