After Qihoo 360 launched comprehensive search, Huxiu immediately asked Guo Ang, a search technology expert and former head of Sogou's web search results, to write an article "Whose Cheese Will 360 Search Move?" His point of view is: The launch of 360 Search will have the greatest impact on Google. As Google loses ground and Sosou fades out, Chinese searches in the future will be dominated by Baidu, Sogou, and 360’s New Romance of the Three Kingdoms. As the differences in quality become smaller, the future search war will be a very fierce battle for channels, markets and marketing.
In the past few days, with the gradual unfolding of the war, Baidu's stock price has even been affected to a certain extent in the capital market; on the field battlefield, in order to prepare for 360's attack, Baidu has added prompt information on its own encyclopedia, know-how and other pages to guide the use of Qi. People who search for tigers switch to Baidu.
On August 22, Sogou CEO Wang Xiaochuan stated in a letter to internal employees of the company:
"The competition between 360 and Sogou is nothing new, especially in the browser field. In the search field, I think this will be a joint subversion of Baidu by both parties. Because of the entry of 360, search has entered the "new" market of Baidu, Sogou and 360 "Three Kingdoms Era", we were both enemies and friends with them."
"Work together to subvert Baidu!"
However, before that, Sogou and 360 must realize what obstacles they cannot overcome when facing Baidu. Today, we continue to invite Guo Ang to discuss.
His article is as follows:
Why 360 must search
The profit models of 360 and Sogou are relatively close, both are browser models, and the sources of revenue for both parties are search, navigation, and games. However, through financial report analysis, it can be found that there are large differences in the various distributions between the two parties, as follows:
Note: All data are quoted from public data such as financial reports of both parties, unit (10,000 US dollars). Among them, Qihoo Search's revenue financial report was not included, but the author got it through inquiries.
Sogou’s total search revenue is 22 million US dollars. Calculated based on the browser traffic accounting for 60%, the browser’s contribution to its search revenue is 13.2 million US dollars, and the installation volume of 360 browser is 4 times that of Sogou. If the same effect of Sogou is achieved, Revenue can reach US$52.8 million, with a full 70% room for growth. If it approaches Baidu's RPM (revenue per thousand searches), or expands other traffic sources, revenue can grow even more. Of course, it is not easy to reach Sogou's level. It requires long-term accumulation and improvement of brand, search experience, monetization capabilities, etc.
Therefore, 360 search is almost a choice that has to be made.
Compared with 360, Sogou also has huge room for improvement in game revenue without expanding its product line. In addition, the navigation part also has some room for improvement.
Can 360 Search really threaten Baidu?
If 360 Search wants to become bigger and stronger, it must realize what Baidu has.
Strong brand advantage
Some people say that there are only two search engine markets in China, browsers and Baidu. Although not completely accurate, it is a good reflection of the current situation of the entire market.
Since Chinese netizens are generally low-end, a large number of netizens still access search engines through website websites and other methods. In fact, almost all users who actively use search engines (enter URLs to access or access favorites) are on Baidu, and there are also a small number of high-end users who are fans of Google. Active traffic mainly comes from brand influence and appeal, which is a problem that is difficult for all other search engines to solve.
The traffic of other search engines depends more on channels, which generally include website sites, Internet cafes and search boxes within some websites. High-quality channels like Sogou or 360 that have their own browsers can directly obtain traffic, but others rely heavily on traffic purchases. In the past two years, with the fierce competition between Sogou and Soso, the price of traffic purchase has also increased. Without strong liquidity to support it, it will be difficult to recover the cost.
Moreover, we found that the unit traffic acquisition cost of Sogou and Sogou is much higher than that of Baidu. Why can Baidu still buy traffic? This is because on the same website navigation station, if the search box of Baidu or Sogou is placed, users will The usage rate of this search box is different, which is due to the strong brand advantage.
Outside of channels, Baidu's strong brand advantage is difficult to shake in a short period of time, and it is also a hurdle that other search engines find difficult to overcome.
Strong product moat
In the click ranking list of Baidu search, the top ten results are as follows: (The following results are basically in order but may be slightly different)
Baidu Knows, Baidu Encyclopedia, Baidu Wenku, Baidu Tieba, Baidu Video, Baidu Pictures, SouSouwen, Youku, iQiyi, Baidu Maps.
Except for Sosouwen and Youku, they are all products of Baidu. Among them, Zhizhi, Wenku and Tieba are almost irreplaceable. The first two have a lot of very high-quality content, and are even the only high-quality results for some long-tail queries; while Tieba has many loyal users and will receive many queries. main needs of users. As for encyclopedias, although there are competitors such as Interactive Encyclopedia and Baidu Encyclopedia, Baidu Encyclopedia has relatively the richest content and high-quality structure, which is currently difficult to compare with its competitors.
These products and powerful content resources form Baidu's powerful "moat", which is a difficulty faced by all other search engines. If they are not ranked, the user experience may be affected. If they are ranked, users are likely to be Just stay on Baidu. Baidu can also use various methods to keep these users on Baidu, such as currently prompting users from 360 search.
There is another thing that will make other search engines even more depressing. For all non-Baidu search engines, the first keyword in search volume must be "Baidu", which will make Baidu's homepage also appear in its top ten list. .
Huge investment in peripheral resources
If you want to operate a search engine product well, you must not only do a good job in web search itself, but also need to implement a large number of peripheral products, such as commercial products and vertical search. Although it is not as difficult as web search itself, it also requires A lot of human investment.
In order to more accurately meet user needs and improve search quality, we must not only improve the basic algorithm, but also embed vertical search results when users have needs. In Baidu and Sogou, embedded vertical searches include video, music, pictures, news, maps, shopping, real estate, recruitment, software, and Weibo (has been suspended). Although we can cooperate with Jiji and Amap as we do now, if we want to further improve the search experience, especially the long-tail experience, we still need to develop it ourselves.
The development of commercial products is not easy. In addition to developing a bidding system similar to Fengchao, and a set of advertising matching and click-through rate prediction algorithms, it is also necessary to establish a large number of agent channels, which also requires a lot of effort. and manpower.