Qihoo 360 Looks for 15-20% Search Market Share
Snowball Finance, 11/01/12
In a recent Chinese media interview, Zhou Hongyi, CEO of Chinese internet services and security software provider Qihoo 360 (NYSE: QIHU), stated that, "based on our strong traffic and browser coverage, we hope to take a reasonable portion of China's PC search market, namely around 15%-20%." Zhou did not provide an exact time frame for when the company hoped to reach its 15%-20% target.
Zhou noted that the company has recruited a number of former Google employees that have been able to add effective new technologies to the company's So.com search engine, such as machine learning tools to rank search results.
According to Zhou, the biggest problem with China's search engine market is that "industry leaders" do not focus enough on user experience, referring to Baidu. He further stated that to make its search engine successful, Qihoo 360 would not "over-commercialize the market, and would instead put an emphasis on user experience, control the amount of banner ads per page, differentiate paid results from natural results with different colors, and filter out links for Trojan horses and phishing sites." If Trojan horse or phishing sites attempted to advertise on So.com, Zhou stated that Qihoo 360 would not accept their business.
According to Zhou, China's search engines used to deliver search results as quickly as possible to provide users the exact information they were looking for. In the last few years, a number of search engines have begun to invest in developing their own content, creating a relatively closed search ecosystem. He continued, "While other people are closing themselves off, we are looking to partner with vertical search content providers. For example, in the medical industry, we will not accept medical ads, but users will still search for medical information, so we will only partner with trusted sites such as online health care site haodf.com."
Zhou stated that the company is currently developing a number of new technologies, such as a "thumbs up" style suggestion feature, similar to Google's "+1" or Facebook's "thumbs up" button, that will be launched on its 360 Safe web browser. According to Zhou, Google's +1 feature has not succeeded because users must exit the search results page in order to like a page and suggest it to their friends. Qihoo 360 will solve this problem by adding a "Praise" (Zan) button directly onto the company's 360 Safe web browser. Qihoo 360 will use data from the praise button to help in its ranking of search results.
Qihoo is also planning a "middle finger" feature, which will allow users to mark poor or unrelated search results, and to flag and report fraudulent content.
Qihoo 360 does not plan to enter the mobile search market in the short term, but Zhou did note that mobile search may come to topple PC search in the future. Zhou feels that the company will have an opportunity to develop in the language input and mapping fields, but that these tools must first be built upon strong search technology.
According to Zhou, Qihoo 360's search team has "several hundred" employees.
Editor's Note: Marbridge's recently published Q3 2012 Chinese Paid Search Market Report provides in-depth analysis of Qihoo 360's entry into the search market, including detailed explanations of the creative tactics the company is using to gain market share and the strategies it is employing to differentiate itself. For more information on the topics covered in the report, please click here.
Keywords: Zhou Hongyi Internet browser Baidu market share mobile search Qihoo 360 QIHU online search BIDU
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