iiMedia Report| 2018H1 Chinese Mobile Search Engine Market Monitoring Report

On July 27, 2018, iiMedia Research, global leading new economic data mining and analysis organization, authoritatively released 2018H1 Chinese Mobile Search Engine Market Monitoring Report. As the data of iiMedia Research showed, in the second quarter of 2018, the scale of Chinese Mobile Search Engine users increased to 672 million, with a growth rate of 0.90%. The scale of mobile search users has tended to be saturated, and the growth rate tend to be stable. (The full hd PDF version of 《2018H1 Chinese Mobile Search Engine Market Monitoring Report》 is 49 pages, which can be downloaded by clicking the download button at the bottom of the article.)

　　The following are excerpts from the report:

　　China has 672 million mobile search users in the industry

　　As the data of iiMedia Research showed, in the second quarter of 2018, the scale of Chinese Mobile Search Engine users increased to 672 million, with a growth rate of 0.90%. The scale of mobile search users has tended to be saturated, and the growth rate tend to be stable.

　　Baidu Search and Sogou Search rank first and second among users' preferred brands

　　As the data of iiMedia Research showed, in the second quarter of 2018, Baidu accounted for 42.5% of the users’ first preferred brand, Sogou was followed by 23.2%.

　　Users Most Usually Search the Content of Commodity

　　As the data of iiMedia Research showed, among all the contents that the interviewed mobile search users would search for, the information of commodities is the most frequently searched.

　　Users used Text Search Most Usually

　　As the data of iiMedia Research showed, among the interviewed u mobile search users , 42.0 % scored 5 points for text search ( i.e. frequently used text search ), and the cumulative percentage of 3 points and above was 85.0 %, ranking first among all search methods in the first half of 2018.

　　Over 40% of the Users Have Used the Speech Search Function

　　As the data of iiMedia Research showed, in the first half of 2018, 42.0% of the interviewed mobile search users had used speech search function before.

　　Over 70% of the Users who did not Use Speech Search Before did not Know about the Function

　　As the data of iiMedia Research showed, in the first half of 2018, over 70.8% of the interviewed mobile search users who did not use the speech search function before did not know about the function.

　　Main Reason that Users not Using Speech Search is their Being Accustomed to Text Input

　　As the data of iiMedia Research showed, in the first half of 2018, the main reason that the interviewed mobile search users who know speech search but not using it is their habits of using text input, which accounts for 70.4%.iiMedia Research consulting analyst believes that, finding the way to cultivate the habit of using speech search might become the major obstacle for the promoting of the speech search for the search industry.

　　The accuracy of speech recognition is the main consideration of users.

　　As the data of iiMedia Research showed, in the first half of 2018, the accuracy of speech recognition is the most important factor that influences the willingness of using speech search for the interviewed mobile search users who know speech search but not using it. iiMedia Research consulting analyst believes that, the speech search function is still immature and there exist problems in the process of voice input, voice recognition and results presentation. The difficulty of ensuring the accuracy of speech recognition is the biggest problem that hinder the users to use speech search function.

　　The User's Habit of Using Speech Search is Gradually Developing.

　　As the data of iiMedia Research showed, in the first half of 2018, 47.5% of mobile search users who used speech search developed the habit of using speech search in specific situations, while only 3.4 % of users stopped using speech search again. iiMedia Research consulting analyst believes that users are gradually developing the habit of using speech search. With the further improvement of speech search technology, the number of the users is expected to continuously increased.

　　Users Use Search Engines as Speech Search Entrance Most Oftenly

　　As the data of iiMedia Research showed, in the first half of 2018, among the interviewed mobile search users, the proportion of users who often use search engines as speech search entrance is the highest. Only 5.0% of the users almost do not take search engines as speech search entrances, the proportion is lower than that of other speech search entrances.

　　Speech Recognition Errors are the Main Obstacles for Using Speech Search

　　As the data of iiMedia Research showed, in the first half of 2018, 69.5 % of speech search users think that the inaccurate speech recognition is the main problem for using speech search. 47.5 % of the users think that speech search cannot accurately understand the searched problem.

　　Users satisfy least with speech recognition

　　As the data of iiMedia Research showed, in the first half of 2018，the satisfaction grading results of the interviewed mobile search users who had used speech search indicated that the proportion of users who scored 5 for speech recognition is the lowest. The accuracy of speech recognition needs to be improved for the mobile search at present.

　　Nearly Half of the Users are Willing to Use Speech Search in the Future

　　As the data of iiMedia Research showed, in the first half of 2018, 48.3% of the interviewed mobile search users are willing to use speech search in the future. iiMedia Research consulting analyst believes that, speech search has a bright future.

　　Over Half of the Users are Optimistic about the Future Development of Speech Search

　　As the data of iiMedia Research showed, in the first half of 2018, more than half of the mobile search users are optimistic about future development of speech search, while nearly 39.5% of the users are neutral about its future development.

　　Baidu search: The launch of Simple Search

　　In may 2018, Baidu officially launched the new search APP named Simple Search. The main features of Simple Search are its AI functions and its strategy of never advertising. It also provides choices between Celebrity Joint version and Youth version for different people group. By June, the Celebrity Joint version of Simple Search has included editions of Timo Feng, Yi Sun, Ray Ma, and Jane Zhang. And the Youth version achieve the information screening according to the tags of pornography, bloody, and violence.

　　Baidu Search: The Rise of Information Flow Service

　　iiMedia Research consulting analyst believes that, shift of the reading habits from PC era to mobile era indicates the inevitably rise of information flow advertising. And Baidu has added information flow advertisement bellows its search box.Baidu classify the interests of its users based on their long-term search contents and accurately locate at users’ concerns based on their short-term search contents to improve the accuracy of advertisement placement. It also optimize the advertising form by providing the information flow advertisements in the video form.

　　Sogou Search: MT Tech Makes Sogou Search Better

　　Sogou Search applies advanced AI technology to the field of translation, its self-developed Neural Machine Translation technology is helping users breaking the fence of different languages.

　　The Trendency of Chinese Mobile Search Engine Industry

　　Deepening Development of AI Technologies

　　iiMedia Research consulting analyst believes that, the fact that AI technologies continually injecting growth momentum into Search market is beneficial to the optimization of users’ search experience, and to the pluralism and innovation development of search engine companies by providing user data. On the one hand, AI technologies had provided more pluralism input method of searching. On the other hand, the recommendation algorithm of AI technology continues to develop to provide more precise content recommendation for search users, and thus promoting the increase of pay clicks and increasing the revenue conversion rate of advertising products.

　　Pluralism of Human-Computer Interaction

　　iiMedia Research consulting analyst believes that, the human-computer interaction of mobile search engine has gone through a process from text input to deriving speech search, image search, and video search functions. Mobile search users have more convenient search experience thanks to the development of AI technologies such as speech input and image recognition. Q&A technologies based on the natural language processing has also provided more natural search results for the mobile search users. Retrieval methods of key words searching would be replaced by Q&A dialogue and video searching in the future, and the Human-Computer Interaction would be pluralism and natural.

　　Diversified Search Contents

　　At present, the growth of Mobile Search Users is slowing down. The services provided by the search engine is homogenous. The search engine companies are challenged by various vertical search companies in the information explosion era. The increasing diversified and high-level user demands require for more convenience in information acquirement, and more specialization in the information contents. iiMedia Research consulting analyst believes that mobile search platforms would focus on finding its own advantages, and provide diversified and vertical search contents in specific fields such as health care, education, etc. in the future.

　　The Rise of Information Flow Service

　　The Competitive Bidding Model has led to frequent problems in the search industry, and has led to the public’s distrust to the search results. Meanwhile, with the rise of mobile search industry, News Feed Ads is more in line with users’ reading habits, and more in line with the personal recommendation demands in the era of Mobile Internet. AI technologies has made continual improvements of the recommendation algorithm, which helps search engine understanding users’ searching contents and interests better, and provides technological assistance for the information flow services.