Thoughts on Domestic Search market

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After a few short years of gestation and development, China has formed a capacity of up to hundreds of millions of of the search engine market. IResearch's statistics show that China's search engine market reached 500 million yuan in 2003, a 117% increase from 230 million in 2002. iresearch statistics of the search engine market, including IE Address bar search, site Landing, fixed rankings, bidding rankings, such as a variety of revenue modules, including operators and agents of income. According to iresearch estimate, in the next three years our country search engine market will grow 60% to 70% annually, 2004 can reach 840 million yuan, 2006 can reach 2.3 billion yuan. Although these data show that China's search engine market growth momentum and potential are very strong, but we are not difficult to find, China's search engine market in the high-speed development also appeared a lot of disharmony phenomenon, and some may even bring about a devastating blow to the entire industry.

Channel confusion

2003, the domestic search engine market competition focus on the search for the flow of the fight. This year, Hui Cong won four big portal search single, and Baidu, Google in the domestic market has formed a pillars trend. Baidu, after losing the support of the portal site, has instead increased its traffic in other ways. Because, regardless of the search engine, its value should be reflected by the size of the search traffic. In the 2004, the channel turned into the focus of the search market contention. After all, the sale of search engine services to a dedicated sales staff to persuade customers to buy, this work requires search service providers through the establishment of sales channels across the country to complete. In the "First China Search Economic Summit Forum" held from April 17 to 18th this year, the participation of more than 10 search service providers, including Baidu, China Search union, 8848 and 3721, has generally recognized the importance of the channel, and this conference was opened to the last The drama became a channel for battle.

However, if the use of a word to accurately describe the domestic search engine market channels existing conditions, it is undoubtedly "chaos." There is a general saying is that the current national search engine agents nearly thousands of, of which the larger scale of more than 100, mainly concentrated in Guangdong, Fujian, Zhejiang and other regions. In fact, the number of agents may be much more than that, because the agent sales search engine almost no need for any threshold. As long as there are sales personnel, as long as the request to obtain a very low agent qualification, who can sell search engines. In Xiamen Shihao, for example, its agents have risen from 500 in a year to 2000 in the early 2004, and the company is preparing to rewrite the figure to 3,000 by the end of the year. A dime by hiring people turn yellow pages to sell products agents, the search engine market channels stir mess. Several agents in order to compete for the same customer, mutual low prices to no profit is nothing new. Some strong agents, in order to increase the volume to get a low enough discount, even at a loss sales. It is not easy for any search service provider to regulate the already confusing search engine distribution channels.

Lack of integrity

The vigorous development of Internet has promoted the continuous progress of social economy. However, due to the slow pace of credit mechanism construction, coupled with some blind areas in legal management, some lack of integrity of internet enterprises in order to seek greater economic benefits, often fraud to deceive customers. Search engine industry is no exception, search service providers in the click rate of the top technical indicators cheat phenomenon has been common. According to a person in the industry, through the development of specialized software to increase the click Rate, or for the so-called "click" of the IP address fraud, is an individual search service provider's usual income-generating tricks. Even if the search service provider is clean, the bad and the difficult management of the agents may also be false, because for those who pay by clicks, the higher the rate of hits they pay more, the agent's income will naturally increase.

In addition, in spite of the increasingly competitive domestic search market, but the search business charge mode is still mainly concentrated in the Pay-per-click and fixed rankings, foreign has been very mature and market potential is very large bidding ranking service at home but silent, the reason is mainly related to the lack of integrity related enterprises. China search President, HC International software company CEO Chen Yu when talking about bidding rankings in the domestic not to be regarded as a few reasons, on the one hand it is more cumbersome to sell, manufacturers do not necessarily understand; on the other hand, enterprises to make their own rankings, it must compete with other enterprises, which will lead to high input costs; But the most important point , or the lack of integrity of the Internet industry, may lead to a malicious click phenomenon, such as agents want to their own agent ads high clicks so as to get more divided, competitors hope that through malicious click to make rival enterprises suffer losses. Obviously, if we do not solve the problem of honesty, the search engine market in our country will not be able to achieve greater development, and the whole market may be destroyed.

Competition disorder

Due to the lack of market norms, the search industry in the phenomenon of unfair competition occurs. In the IE Address bar contention, 3721 and Baidu performed a scene. Last September, Baidu sued 3721 in court for "copyright infringement and unfair competition". Baidu announced the launch of the June 2002 search software, found 3721 in its network real name software loaded with a special deletion, the destruction of Baidu search PA running functions, resulting in all the installation of 3721 network real-name software computer can not run the normal Baidu search software, and can not go to Baidu company website download Baidu search Pa. 3721 also Sheng, that the user installed Baidu's IE Search Companion control, their own network real-name function has been destroyed. The results of the lawsuit have recently been announced, but this is not important, because in the not yet standard search industry, through all kinds of "the next three indiscriminate" means of competition with rivals, although it is not glorious, and may even violate the laws of unfair competition law, but only to bring real economic benefits, For a long period of time will continue to serve as a treasure for some enterprises.

The disorderly competition in the search market is also reflected in some domestic Internet enterprises completely disregard their own strength, do not make rational analysis, blindly impulsive, swarm into the market. Since the discovery of the search engine, the gold mine has attracted many companies, including Yahoo, Microsoft and other giants. Domestic enterprises seem to be more enthusiastic, in addition to Baidu, Hui Cong, 3721 of these relatively professional search service enterprises, NetEase, Sina, Sohu and other portals also try to use the advantages of the portal to promote their own search engine, Alibaba, 8848 E-commerce sites are also intended through the shopping search engine to cut into the search market, Even Xinhua's search function is also "mainly its own development." In the "First China Search Power Economic Summit Forum", there are more than 10 search service providers at the same time. The potential of the domestic search engine market is enormous, but it is not easy for anyone to make a difference. After all, the success of search engines depends to a large extent on the sophistication of their technology, which Google has confirmed to us.

Backward technology

After the dotcom bust, Google's success was like a myth. The internet company, which only provided search engine services in 1998, earned about $25 million trillion in 2000, 4 times times the 2001 figure, about 100 million dollars, and 3 times times 2002, to 300 million dollars, with revenues estimated at more than 700 million dollars in 2003. The most important reason for Google's success is that it is thought to maintain the edge of technology leadership in the industry. While domestic search providers have never been willing to admit they are inferior, they are constantly emphasizing that their skills are not low and that they have repeatedly contrasted with Google. 2003, Baidu with the help of a third party organized the "million people public evaluation" activities, the results show that "Baidu beyond Google, become the preferred search engine for Chinese netizens"; HC also publicly conducted a search test with Google, a senior person at the company was pleased to say " Go faster than Google has expected. The credibility of these two Tests is, I am afraid, only their own knowledge.

Beijing 3721 Technology Co., Ltd. General manager Xiangdong undoubtedly the real level of the domestic search engine industry, he said in an interview, "The world really has the core technology of only two companies ――yahoo, Google and MSN." Among them, MSN is half, because after all, Microsoft has not yet released its search engine strategy. He also told reporters that Google and Yahoo's web database are up to 4 billion pages, the global cumulative page of about 10 billion pages. and the largest mass search engine Web database in China is up to 200 million pages. "China's next Generation Internet search engine" project chaired by Dr Liang also believes that now the industry's so-called "third-generation search engine", "intelligent search" concepts such as market speculation, its essence is based on the second generation of "hyper-link analysis technology", there is no independent technology kernel, and in the second generation of technology development and application, Google technology is the strongest, while Microsoft and Yahoo have a big advantage in user groups and funds, these three are the market leader. Although not technologically advanced enterprises will certainly be able to succeed in the search market, but for the search engine this highly technical industry, leaving the technology everything is free to talk about. This is why Yahoo has bought Inktomi and Overture and other professional search engine companies, Microsoft is in search technology to invest a lot of engineers to research and development of important reasons. Domestic search engine enterprises to be in the technical level to catch up with foreign counterparts, still need to work hard for quite a long time.