Top Chinese Search Engine (2025 update)
As this market is booming it is in the best interest of companies willing to do SEO in China to get to know Chinese search engines a little bit better.
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As of February 2025, China’s search engine landscape is dominated by several key players, each holding varying market shares:
| Search Engine | Market Share (%) |
|---|---|
| Baidu | 80% |
| Bing | 20% |
| Haosou | 9.02 |
| Yandex | 3.18 |
| Sogou | 2.63 |
| 1.68 |
Trends in China’s Search Engine Market:
- Baidu’s Dominance: Historically, Baidu has been the leading search engine in China, controlling about 70% to 80% of the market. However, its share has declined in recent years due to emerging competitors.
- Rise of Bing: Microsoft’s Bing has significantly increased its presence in China, growing from a 2.23% market share in January 2021 to 17.5% in January 2024, positioning itself as the second most utilized search engine in the country
- Emergence of Haosou: Haosou, also known as 360 Search, has been closing the gap with Baidu, reflecting a diversifying search engine market.
- Integration of AI: Chinese tech giants are increasingly integrating artificial intelligence into their search services. For instance, Tencent’s Weixin (WeChat) is testing AI integration to enhance its search capabilities, aiming to stay competitive in the evolving AI landscape.
- Mobile Search Growth: With over 1.091 billion mobile internet users as of December 2023, mobile search has become the predominant mode of information retrieval in China, influencing how search engines optimize their platforms.
These trends indicate a dynamic and competitive search engine market in China, with traditional leaders facing challenges from emerging platforms and technological advancements.
The ranking
The Search engines
What are the 3 Best Chinese Search engines?
Baidu
Baidu is China’s dominant search engine, it was launched in 2003. Baidu offers many services such as image and video search, a map service, a cloud service, and a post-bar community (Baidu Tieba). It has been controlling at least 60% of the market since 2010, according to iResearch. But its competitors are doing all they can to undermine Baidu’s dominant position.
📌 What is Baidu?
Baidu is China’s largest and most dominant search engine, often referred to as the “Google of China.” Launched in 2000, it controls over 50% of China’s search market, making it the go-to platform for online information, business visibility, and digital advertising.
🚀 But Baidu isn’t just a search engine—it’s an AI powerhouse, advertising giant, and tech innovator that plays a key role in China’s digital ecosystem.
🔍 Why Does Baidu Dominate the Chinese Market?
1️⃣ The Great Firewall & Google’s Exit 🚫
📌 Google left China in 2010 due to censorship policies, leaving Baidu to take over as the primary search engine.
📌 No major Western competitors = Baidu’s unchallenged growth.
📌 While Bing and Sogou exist, they are far behind in search dominance.
💡 Baidu is not the best search engine—it’s just the best one available in China.
2️⃣ Strong Integration with China’s Digital Ecosystem 🇨🇳
📌 Baidu is not just a search engine—it’s a digital empire. It operates:
✔ Baidu Maps – China’s equivalent of Google Maps.
✔ Baidu Baike – A Wikipedia-like encyclopedia but fully controlled by Baidu.
✔ Baidu Tieba – A huge online forum for community discussions.
✔ Baidu Zhidao – A Q&A platform similar to Quora.
✔ Baidu AI & Cloud – Investing heavily in artificial intelligence and cloud computing.
💡 Baidu controls a massive part of China’s digital space, keeping users locked into its ecosystem.
3️⃣ Best SEO & SEM for China’s Businesses 💰
📌 Baidu PPC (Pay-Per-Click) Advertising is China’s top search engine marketing (SEM) platform.
📌 If a business wants visibility in China, it needs Baidu SEO & paid ads to rank.
📌 Baidu prioritizes Chinese businesses over international competitors.
💡 For brands in China, ranking high on Baidu = digital success.
4️⃣ AI & Innovation Leader 🤖
📌 Baidu isn’t just a search engine—it’s an AI giant, investing billions into:
✔ Baidu Ernie Bot (China’s ChatGPT alternative)
✔ Self-driving car technology (Apollo project)
✔ AI-powered voice search & image recognition
💡 Baidu is evolving beyond search—it’s shaping China’s AI-driven future.
🚀 The Future of Baidu in China
🔹 Expanding AI-powered search & chatbot capabilities
🔹 Competing with Douyin & WeChat’s in-app search features
🔹 Investing in cloud computing & autonomous driving tech
📌 Baidu isn’t just a search engine—it’s a tech empire built for China’s digital-first economy. As long as Google stays out, Baidu stays on top.
Despite the fact that Google dominates the American and European markets, it has never been as popular in China as it is in the West. In fact, it was even forced to close Google.cn, its search engine in China, in 2010 because of the censorship applied in the country and intrusion from hackers. It replaced it with an uncensored search engine platform hosted in Hong Kong. However, China is blocking most of the pages. It is therefore very difficult to use Google in China.
Bing in China: How Microsoft’s Search Engine is Gaining Ground 🇨🇳🔍
📌 What is Bing in China?
Bing is Microsoft’s search engine, and while it remains a minor player globally, in China, it has quietly gained significant market share, becoming the #2 most used search engine after Baidu. As of 2025, Bing holds around 30% of China’s search market, a massive jump from just a few years ago.
🚀 But why is Bing suddenly so popular in China?
🔍 Why is Bing Growing in China?
1️⃣ The Only Western Search Engine Allowed (For Now) 🌎
📌 After Google exited China in 2010, almost all foreign search engines were blocked.
📌 Bing, however, is one of the few that remains accessible—likely because Microsoft complies with Chinese regulations and censors sensitive content.
📌 This makes Bing the only option for users who want a non-Baidu search experience but still need a functional engine.
💡 Bing isn’t “free” like Google, but it offers a different search experience than Baidu.
2️⃣ More Objective Search Results 📰
📌 Many Chinese users feel that Baidu’s search results prioritize paid ads and sponsored content over real, useful results.
📌 Bing is seen as having cleaner, less ad-heavy search results, especially for research, business, and academic topics.
📌 Some users prefer Bing for international news, business reports, and English-language content.
💡 For more balanced search results, Bing is an alternative to Baidu.
Sogou
Sogou has launched ten years ago and has similar services like Baidu and Google. However, its market share remains low, dropping from 8% in 2013 to 3.8% this year. Even despite the US$448 million investment of Tencent in the search engine and the launch of a WeChat specialized search feature in June this year.
Qihoo 360 Search
This search engine is the real challenger of the rankings. Indeed, it went from a 10,4% market share in December 2012 to a 22,5% market share a year after in December 2013. The competition between Baidu and Qihoo 360 was fierce in 2013 as Baidu’s market share had dropped from 71.7% to 63.1% as about as much as Qihoo’s market share had increased and in the same period of time.
The Chinese search engine market is really growing fast and the leaders are also changing at the same speed. So companies doing or planning to do SEO in China have to keep the information they have updated to be sure their efforts are targeted on the right search engine.
