It’s 2024 and searching isn’t always done on search engines anymore.
Our founder Tait conducted an informal poll asking Chinese followers, “Which tool did you use to search most commonly lately?” we found only 24% answered Baidu.
Many are searching on Chinese apps such as Little Red Book, Douyin, and WeChat, as well as AI tools and Western search engines.
Here’s the full data from 110 respondents.
The question was asked on Bilibili, Little Red Book, Douyin, and WeChat, so the results should be skewed to those platforms.
Still, even if biased, there’s enough data there to clearly show that some people nowadays search on apps we don’t consider to be search engines.
In order of most to least used:
- Baidu, the Google of China, still maintained the #1 spot. However, it is much lower than what you might expect from what people call the “Google of China” with only 24% of votes,
- The short-video pioneer Douyin is the Chinese TikTok. Yes, it’s mostly entertainment, but it has a lot of useful content too.
- The lifestyle app Little Red Book is great for improving skills, finding decorating and fashion tips, and comparing schools (to name just a few).
- Western search engines: Google and Bing may be blocked in China, but people still access them with VPNs.
- AI is a huge contender for search, with many Chinese using ChatGPT and other tools.
- Bilibili is China’s closest thing to YouTube (the world’s second most popular place to search after Google).
- Browsers themselves are also often viewed as search engines. Some, like Quark, are created specifically with search in mind. Others, like Safari and UC, are not search engines but still contain search services.
- China’s super-app WeChat features a massive “walled garden” of long-form articles and Sogou provides a great search function. We expect its 4% of the vote is understated.
- Finally, for e-commerce-related searches, users often go directly to the e-commerce platform. Who goes to Baidu to order socks, right? It’s much easier to search on Jingdong or Pinduoduo where one can quickly compare options, purchase, and have the socks delivered by the afternoon. Only two people in the poll mentioned these.
- Q&A platform Zhihu also got one vote.
Notable for this informal poll, NOBODY mentioned searching on the Chinese search engines which are third, fourth, and fifth in the Chinese search engine market —Haosou, Sogou, and Shenma.
In the chart below, you can see the data from Statcounter showing dominance by Baidu and a rapidly growing Bing.
While we agree that Haosou, Sogou, and Shenma search engines are much smaller than Baidu, there are two problems:
- The massive growth of Bing does not match our experience
- It’s limiting to only consider search engines when thinking about where users search.
Let’s first see some data about Chinese Internet users.
The 53rd statistical report on China’s Internet Development report contained some interesting data: As of December 2023, the number of Internet users in China reached 1.092 billion, among which mobile Internet users accounted for 1.091 billion, representing 99.9% of the total.
The proportions of internet users using different devices:
- Desktop computers – 33.9%
- Laptops – 30.3%
- TV – 22.5%
- Tablet – 26.6%
To sum up, these are the key trends you need to understand:
- Around 20% of people in China are not online.
- Everybody online uses a mobile device.
- People use more than one device type.
- They search on the search engine Baidu, and other social platforms, video, e-commerce, and AI tools.
Let’s dig more into the top three channels.
Baidu: A platform for obtaining news and information
Just like its slogan “Baidu Knows Everything with Just a Click” (百度一下，你就知道), people are used to searching for information on Baidu.
Baidu’s user profile primarily consists of a higher proportion of male users (around 74%), with the majority being between 24–35 years old.
Users are mainly from first-tier cities (Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen) and second-tier cities (Fuzhou, Dalian, and Kunming) and exhibit high search frequency and long daily usage times focusing on
- news,
- entertainment,
- technology,
- and lifestyle services.
Stats for Baidu’s mobile app. Note that Baidu’s search function is available without requiring the user to sign in.
Little Red Book: Lifestyle Templates and Consumption Decision Assistance
Little Red Book is positioned to assist users in making consumer decisions and improving their lifestyles.
Integrating e-commerce with social features, the platform provides users a place to shop, socialize, share opinions on topics, and seek advice within a community of like-minded individuals.
With that being said, we’ve also found its algorithm very good at getting a wider range of content to interested users. For example, we use it to promote companies in logistics, e-commerce, and other things Little Red Book isn’t usually known for.
According to data from iMedia Research, in 2023, the main types of information on the Little Red Book platform vary by gender.
- For females – It’s beauty and skincare, diet and wellness, and hair care.
- For males – It’s skills learning, travel guides, sports, and fitness.
Although most users are female, the community is gradually changing.
The proportion of male users has increased from single digits to 30%, and new content trends are continuously being produced within the community.
Both content and user growth are still ongoing.
Douyin: High engagement and e-commerce activities
Douyin users are primarily young adults aged 18–34, with a balanced gender ratio.
This demographic engages with short videos about
- entertainment,
- comedy,
- food,
- travel, and
- life hacks.
Additionally, Douyin users demonstrate significant purchasing power, often buying products through live streams and short videos, making the platform a hotspot for e-commerce activities.
However, what is notable is Douyin’s high proportion of users from third and fourth-tier cities and rural areas, accounting for about 50% to 60% of its total user base.
Overall, the number of users is also growing, forming an important foundation for the platform.
Additionally, these users exhibit high levels of engagement and retention, frequently using TikTok for entertainment, socializing, and shopping.
The search results from different platforms
After discussing user profiles, let’s look at how the search results for the same keyword differ across these three platforms.
I searched for “German Packaging Law” (德国包装法) across different platforms, and here are the results from Baidu on a desktop computer, Baidu App, Little Red Book, and Douyin.
On Baidu’s desktop, ads dominate the top of the page, followed by results from Baidu-owned platforms. You’ll often see collections of content from Zhihu and videos as well.
In comparison, the Baidu App presents ads more subtly, as the formats of ads and organic results are quite similar.
However, results from Zhihu and Bilibili perform better on the app because they are presented individually rather than in collections.
When I saw the search results from Little Red Book, I was immediately drawn in as the image-text format effectively communicates key points to users.
On the other hand, Douyin offers fewer results related to the German packaging law, with most of the content focused on guidelines for registration.
Douyin and Little Red Book show search results for their platforms only.
WeChat, Bilibili, and Zhihu are the same.
Even Baidu shows more of its own properties in the search results than Google does.
A typical first page of Baidu search results will usually show five or more results from Baidu properties, such as
- its wiki,
- social article app Baijiahao,
- knowledge app Zhidao, and
- Zhihu (which it has invested in).
However, unlike all the other platforms we mentioned, Baidu will still show results from other platforms.
Tips for marketing on these platforms
1. For advertising, Baidu will always be your fallback option for entering the Chinese market
Despite ongoing criticisms about Baidu’s performance and concerns over its declining market share, it remains the leading search engine in China.
For advertising, we recommend Baidu more than any other search engine.
2. Use multi-channel content marketing
As we mentioned above, with the exception of Baidu, these platforms only share content from within their own ecosystem. Luckily, adjusting content for use on multiple platforms is relatively inexpensive.
If you have an article for your blog, it can easily be converted for use on WeChat, Baijiahao (owned by Baidu), Zhihu, and other platforms.
It’s even easier if you have short video content for Douyin as it can be shared on Little Red Book, Bilibili, and WeChat Channels in the exact same format.
Converting content for other platforms is approximately 85% cheaper than creating original content.
3. Use a content + advertising strategy for Little Red Book and Douyin
What’s worked well for us on Little Red Book is creating a great content marketing campaign and amplifying it with advertising.
This can drive fresh users to our content, some of whom might interact and follow, and others may be ready to move further into the conversion funnel already.
What kind of content works well in China will often match what type of content works well for your business outside of China.
We can localize all types of content:
- Articles
- Short videos
- Long videos
- Websites
- Other things
However, as a starting point, we require great source content to work with.