new Chinese search engine Toutiao Search

[bill]

ByteDance launches new search engine in China [reuters.com]

The domain for the new search engine, Toutiao Search, sits within the company’s flagship product - Chinese news aggregator Jinri Toutiao.

...

The company said on social media last month it was looking to hire people to work with its search engine team, and had hired technical experts from Google, Baidu and Bing.

It said the search engine would offer content from ByteDance-owned apps, including Jinri Toutiao and the Chinese version of TikTok, as well as the wider web.

Toutiao Search offers censored results like other Chinese search engines, according to searches conducted by Reuters.

The main domain will likely be www.toutiao.com, but for now it is a news aggregation site.

[mack]

It's a brave move by any company to set up a search engine, especially when you look at the competition and realise you will be going up against one of the worlds largest companies. I guess China is one of the few places where they do stand a real chance. When other search engines are having problems abiding with local laws and gaining market penetration. This will certainly be interesting to see how they do.

Mack.

[tangor]

The market (Asian) is immense. There are some players already but have not yet achieved "g" status so there is room for growth.

[TorontoBoy]

I welcome a new search engine in China's internet. Frankly I find Baidu search terrible, in that I can't find relevant info. They have a lot of advertisement that gets in the way of finding actual info.

Their site, jinritoutiao [toutiao.com...] is all Chinese. In doing a search they have something like a captcha, where you have to move a puzzle piece horizontally into the right location before you see the search results. Different, but works. The site is not responsive.

Search results are not in reverse time chronological order, so recent news can be buried deep in the search results. Not great.

Cursory searches in English return China-only sources that have used English words, but all text is in Chinese. I searched for content for "Canada" and "Toronto" in English. Interestingly much of the search results are relevant and timely, but focus on travel, study abroad, education. This search engine might also be targeting the Chinese community visiting Canada? Searches for "Canada" and "Toronto" in Chinese return relevant results, but only Chinese sources, and mainly travel and study abroad. There seems to be no mainstream Canadian media sources.

On the right column they have their Beijing internet business and cultural license. Interestingly they state they have a "Internet Drug Information Service Qualification Certificate", which I don't know what that means.

As with all Chinese internet providers there is contact info for illegal or incorrect information. There is no webmaster contact info anywhere.

[iamlost]

The Law of the People's Republic of China on Pharmaceutical Administration originated in 1985 and was updated two decades ago when China joined the WTO. Basically foreign medicines have to be authorized to enter the Chinese market via an official examination and receiving a registration certificate.

Under the above law, the Internet Drug Information Service Qualification Certificate allows Chinese entities to legally provide foreign medicine information, including advertising, pricing.
Note: prescription medicine is forbidden from mass media advertising.

[iamlost]

ByteDance is also developing streaming music and workplace messaging apps.

China averages two new SEs a year, most simply fade away; however ByteDance, at ~$80USD billion valuation, may have sufficient leverage.

[bill]

The 2 new SEs a year line caught my eye too. I try to post new info when there's an English article to link to, but I assume that there are more engines I'm missing by not following the Chinese language news.

I expect most Chinese users feel the same frustration as TorontoBoy about the SERPs at Baidu. That likely fuels startups thinking they can challenge the leader.

[iamlost]

Compared to the US where Google search platforms (Search 63%, Image 23%, Youtube 4%, Maps 1%) dominate China is still actually somewhat splintered.

Yes, Baidu is the overall reigning SE at 70.5%, followed by Shenma 15.3%, Sogou 4.6%, Haosou 3.8%, and a significant 'other' at 4.6%.

However, what is really 'in play' in the Chinese search engine stakes is mobile market share.

Baidu still leads with 42%, down greatly, while Sogou jumps to 23.8%, Haosou to 15.3%, Shenma drops slightly to 14.8%, and surprisingly 'other' is still significant at 3.5% showing that the search market, even, perhaps especially, in mobile is still in play. And it is this mobile market that Toutiao Search is specifically targeting.

While I expect those of us in this thread are aware it is worth reminding that the sheer quantitative size of the Chinese online market means that what one might otherwhere consider percentages small enough to ignore are objectively significant absolute numbers.
EG: that 3.5% of 'other' mobile search engine is roughly 28 million internet users.
And Baidu looks weak.

Note: on a similar quantitative China currently has, by PPP (purchasing power parity), a middle class equivalent in numbers to the entire population of the US. One reason that Singles Day, 11-November, consistently generates multiples of the entire Black Friday through Cyber Monday weekend US sales revenue.