China’s search engine war continues. As Baidu opts to stay silent in this battle, the new entrant to the search market, Qihoo’s (NYSE:QIHU) 360 Search, has been making improvements. Here’s the latest: Qihoo has implemented a “like” button on its ‘360 Safe Browser for PCs, aiming to direct its users’ recommendations from within its browser to provide a more accurate search in its search engine.
According to QQ Tech, Qihoo’s “Like Project” aims to encourage users to recommend interesting websites, and in return this allows the new 360 Search to provide, the company claims, quality search to users. At the same time, it helps to promote and increase the website’s page ranking.
Qihoo 360 president Qi Xiangdong commented (translations are mine):
Users these days project a more passive voice in the way search engines work […] The “Like-Project” is implemented to give a fair and subjective search ranking.
As to the mechanics behind how a traditional search engine ranks its results, Qihoo 360 finds it less reliable as some websites are always placed at the bottom of the search result. Now as it involves the users’ recommendations, they believe that it’s a better way to provide higher quality search results. Or it might just be a cheap gimmick.
360’s CEO Zhou Hongyi earlier explained (translations are mine):
[…] As the search engine market develops, users’ experience and recommendation is an important fundamental factor towards growth. There are still plenty of possibilities that we can explore with our browser and search engine.
Personally, I reckon it’s good to see the inclusion of the users’ experience in trying to improve the search results. It will be also interesting to see the response on this new feature from rivals like Baidu. Stay tuned.
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