Chinese search engines
Baidu
Baidu was the Google replacement in China. It filled the gap left in the market by a “block” in China. The issue with Baidu, if there is one, is that you cannot determine in the results which are Ad placements and which listing best matches your results. This is different to Google, where Ads are clearly marked.
Shenma
Shenma believes this is the most interesting development in search engines over the last year. Shenma, part of the Alibaba family, aims to bridge the gap between traditional search engines and e-commerce sites, such as Tmall, JD Buy, Amazon, and other independent online stores. The Chinese search engine market grew by 10% in just over a year (April 2018). With fast market growth, Shenma is gaining traction in the market.
Qihoo
QiHoo360 started in PC security. In part, it could be compared to Norton 360. The significant difference is that it is free of cost and provides access to your PC software data, which is used to make recommendations and display ads. Many Chinese PC users install 360 to protect their PCs/mobiles from hacking, and it has been successful in preventing it. In doing so, when the 360 Search Engine is installed on a PC, its search engine is promoted, similar to how Microsoft used to install its IE browser automatically.
Sogou
Sogou is part of the Tencent software collection. Sogou links to the rest of Tencent's software product range, e.g. QQ and WeChat. Despite this integration with WeChat and QQ, Sogou's growth in the Chinese Search Engine has not occurred. We believe this is due to the increase in use of the Tencent WeChat platform, which contains its own search engine.