Qihoo takes 20% of Chinese search market in October, but Baidu slips

Alibaba-owned Chinese traffic stats company CNZZ‘s latest report shows a strong performance by Qihoo’s 360 search engine, which is now above the 20 percent market share benchmark. Qihoo (NYSE:QIHU) says it aims for 25 percent by the end of the year.

CNZZ’s stats for October 2013 (top) vs October 2012 (bottom). Please excuse the Google Translate inaccuracies.

That increase seems to be coming out of Baidu’s pocket. Baidu (NASDAQ:BIDU), after a slight increase in September, is back on the downward path. China’s leading search engine fell to its lowest point in years, 62 percent. That’s a more than 10 percent drop in the last 12 months.

Sogou also had a modest increase and rose above the 10 percent line, likely thanks to its merger with Tencent’s Soso (although Soso is still an active search engine). Everything else – Google, Bing, Youdao, and Yahoo – all remained effectively stagnant or decreased. In the last year, Google has already fallen from its meager five percent standing to less than two percent.

(Source: TechNode)

(Editing by Willis Wee)