Search giants compete for the local search market

9Month 15Day , Sohu search engine sogou held in Guangzhou"Search for every day"The user experience activity launched sogou's local search service, making the local search market more competitive.

Local Search of Chinese and foreign giants

This year4Month, Sohu930A map search service website was acquired for tens of thousands of dollars.Go2mapAnd then launch24Local Search of cities. The local search service provided by Sina search engine only covers4Cities, SinaCEOWang Yan,12At the end of the month, the Local Search coverage will reach14Cities. In 9Month 5Day ,GoogleDeclared that its local search can be China100Multiple cities provide local information70Map Service is available in multiple cities.

At the same time, a Public Beta page for Baidu local search appeared on the Internet. Baidu insiders revealed that Baidu will launch its many-time map searches in secret R & D to provide users with life information. Previously, Baidu launched its local search in collaboration with China Telecom's yellow pages to provide local practical information. Because of their similar positioning, Baidu does not rule out the possibility of integrating the two in the future.

At the same time, local search has already appeared in the segmented market. There are more than a dozen well-known professional local search websites that only provide a certain type of information, such as hotel search. These professional search websites objectively put pressure on several major search engines and become the target of competition and acquisition by large companies. Wang Jianjun, vice president of Sohu, said:"We will pay attention to all our competitors in the industry, and there is certainly a possibility that the segmented search providers will be acquired by several major search giants."

Attractive profit opportunities

Wang Jianjun said:"In the hundreds of millions of maps and Yellow Pages, there is a huge advertisement market, and even a card location. 3G Service, thus becoming a battle for the military,"

According to iResearch market Consulting data, the size of the Chinese search engine market last year was12.5RMB million, with an annual growth rate81%. Estimated2007The market scale will reach56.2Billion RMB. Local search will occupy an increasing share of the entire search market.

There are many business models that local search can explore."In time 3G Network, the local search service will be morePDAOr get applications on mobile terminals, or even gradually surpassPCTerminal utilization."

Data Providers become the focus of competition

"The biggest problem with local search is not the technology, but the accuracy, richness, and timely update of information data of each physical point on the map,"Wang Jianjun said,"It is impossible for us to send people to collect information in every city. The cost is too high."

Cooperation with yellow pages is one of the solutions. Baidu has established Exclusive cooperation with China Telecom's yellow pages, including Sina, Sohu,GoogleThey all work with Different Yellow Pages companies."However, in practice, we can find the information on the yellow pages.60% Are not accurate,"The person in charge of the local search told reporters.

Therefore, in addition to the Yellow Pages, various search engines are looking for data providers. Small and Medium data providers are becoming"Coriander". According to the person in charge of Sina local search, Sina cooperates with vertical websites in different industries to expand data."Sogou tries to cooperate with data companies in cities across the country and try different cooperation targets and methods,"Said Wang Jianjun."Baidu will certainly cooperate with various data providers,"Baidu spokesman said.

As data providers are scarce resources, a number of search giants work with a data provider at the same time, suchGoogleAnd Sina's map providersMapabcHow to build a large, professional database that can be shared with competitors while avoiding sharing? The direct consequence of this kind of reality will be the enclosure impulse and expansion acceleration of giant enterprises. Through capital operation or business-layer cooperation, the popularity of map search may directly drive a new round of M & A boom.

Competition is not yet fully developed

Internet analyst Lu Weigang believes that local search is very attractive to the advertisement market of small and medium-sized enterprises,GoogleThe biggest obstacle to dominance in the Chinese market is localization. Chinese search engines are not afraid.GoogleStrong capital and technology leader, and such localization initiatives will put a lot of pressure on Chinese manufacturers. However, Wang Jianjun believes that the traffic of search engines in the Chinese market mainly comes from leisure and entertainment, suchMP3Search, rather than local searching for this type of e-commerce."Local Search has just begun to attract attention, and this market is not yet available. More companies need to cultivate it together.".

The person in charge of Sina local search also said that competition in the local search market has not yet fully started, for three reasons: first, it takes time for users to develop local search habits. Second, it also takes time for sellers to understand and accept local search advertisements. In addition, the quality and functions of the local search service must be continuously improved by various search engines.

Transferred from donews