The development of e-commerce platform will erode the interests of search engine industry

an inescapable fact is that the business model that helps search engines to achieve great success is now being challenged ...







Can
compare search engines to business-to-business e-commerce platforms?


from the provision of services and objects to see, search engines (such as Baidu, Google) and business-to-business E-commerce platform (such as Alibaba website, Network Shing Business treasure, etc.) are two distinct services: Search engine services to the Internet access to accurate information, it is facing the target of all Internet users While Business-to-business E-commerce is to help businesses trade, especially to help small and medium-sized enterprises to obtain suppliers or buyers, it is not the target of all Internet users, but enterprises. These differences are the main reasons why no one compares the two. However, if we put aside the content of the service and turn to the service objectives of the two, we will find that they are quite coincident in some way.





from the search engine of the ranking of the user composition, the vast majority of users are not ordinary Internet users, small and medium-sized enterprises occupy the main composition. For small and medium-sized enterprises, the purpose of bidding is to promote the product or brand, the ultimate goal is to hope that potential buyers can easily find them, and buy their products or services. Likewise, business-to-business E-commerce is more pure, and it has the meaning to help businesses make business.





therefore, from the "business" point of view, the user in the search engine ranking is to bring more customers, to achieve more business, but also on the Business-to-business E-commerce platform is the same, although the two provide different forms of service, but to help customers "business" the ultimate goal is identical.








service business-to-business, search engine and business-to-business platform who is more effective?





The question now before users is whether choosing which is more effective in achieving business.





I think that the search engine in helping customers "achieve business" efficiency, and business-to-business E-commerce platform has a gap.





1. From the point of view of direct trade service, the search engine does the marketing activities, and the direct support to trade is limited. This relationship is like the "marketing department" and "sales department" within the enterprise, and search engines play the role of "market department", while the business-to-business E-commerce platform is both.





2. The credibility problem is one of the most important reasons to restrict business, and the mainstream business-to-business E-commerce platform provides the honest authentication for the paid users, and the search engine does not provide the service directly.





3. The ranking of users on search engines needs to be competitive and the rankings have nothing to do with the actual trading activities of the users. However, in the Business-to-business platform, through the integrity (or integrity index) ranking and users of the actual trade links closely, can guide users to more attention to their business behavior.





4. From the point of view of information transmission, the followers of Business-to-business platform are more purposeful and their business demands are more direct.





5. The mainstream business-to-business E-commerce platform begins to provide a "package" of business transactions that serve the business processes of the entire transaction.




The
above is only part of the differences between search engines and business-to-business e-commerce platforms, but it is enough to illustrate the problem. If we assume that a small business can only choose between a search engine and a business-to-business E-commerce platform, he chooses what. After all, the nature of the search engine is the public information platform, and business-to-business E-commerce platform is a more subdivided business platform, it directly serves the trade, and provides some trade necessary functions.








E-commerce platform will erode the interests of the search engine?





However, the above discussion does not suggest that search engines and business-to-business E-commerce platforms are mutually exclusive. After all, there are a significant number of customers who use both services at the same time, and we cannot say that search engines serve only the business-to-business domain, and search engines still have a huge advantage in business promotion in terms of serving ordinary consumers.





but in the field of business-to-business, the importance of search engines is indeed being hit by more specialized and targeted services offered by business-to-business websites. When users, especially those on a small scale, find that business-to-business sites are enough to meet their needs, their desire to use search engines decreases. Moreover, "do E-commerce to find Business-to-business website" and "Do E-commerce search engine" Two concepts sound, the former logic more natural.





from the local research I have done, the net trader has a very clear view of the search engine as a supplement. "Inquiries from search engines are very limited," a network trader told me, "almost all of our customers are from business-to-business platforms." "Most of the internet marketers I've surveyed have had the experience of bidding on search engines, but now they're almost no longer bidding."





There is a trend for search engine manufacturers to consider, that is, when E-commerce is more mature, similar to business-to-business will continue to appear in the field of services to ordinary consumers. If E-commerce is well developed, and buyers and suppliers are accustomed to looking for goods and services from E-commerce sites, the role of search engines in business is reduced, especially in the long tail areas on which they depend.





does this herald a shift in the focus of the Internet's next 10 years? What is the field of search engine to continue?