360 Search – The 2nd largest Chinese search engine
360 Search is another Chinese search engine you must know besides Baidu!
Although Baidu is still the largest local search engine in China, and it is the first option for most of the marketers when expanding their reach in China, Baidu only accounts for half of the search market, while China recorded 772 million internet users by the end of the year 2017, any proportion is representing a rather large amount of audiences. Therefore, it is crucial to include more search engines to get more market coverage in China.
Search Engine History
360 Search is the second biggest search engine in China, with over 35% market share according to 360. Its company is Qihoo 360 a Chinese cyber security company founded in 2005. Its free anti-virus software is the most popular and trusted in the country; Qihoo 360 also operates the largest Android market and is the main web browser provider in China.
In 2012, the parent company Qihoo launched its very own search engine with domain so.com. ‘S’ represents safe, and ‘o’ represent open. It immediately became the second most popular search engine in China, and progressively grew its user base and taking market share from Baidu. It changed the name to ‘Haosou’ in 2015, meaning ‘easy to search’ and reversed to the name of ‘360 Search’ in the following year.
360 Search is the default search engine used on the 360 internet browsers, another reason for its impressive rapid growth.
360 Search is still the key opponent to Baidu today. Qihoo claims that it is the most secure search engine in China, as it relies on advanced cybersecurity technology, blocking malicious or fraudulent sites and making the navigation more secure.
The Benefits of using 360 Search
The competition level is lower on 360, consequently, you can expect the lower cost per click and better ROI comparing with Baidu. Moreover, 360 Search also offers open data resource to help advertisers to understand the search trend in the market.
- less complicated PPC advertising account opening process
- cheaper CPC
- Better ROI
- Free market trend tool – 360 Index
360 Index is similar to Baidu Index, but much easier to acquire an account. It offers insights on the keywords search trends, keywords mentions, key traits of the audiences, and locations of the searches.
Are you adverting on 360 Search yet? Maybe it is time to give it a go. Contact us today to grab your FREE China PPC account opening service.
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