Chinese search engines and the state of search in China

Baidu leads, and the market has started to shrink

The main Chinese search engine is Baidu (百度), founded in Beijing on 18 January 2000 by Robin Li and Eric Xu. It leads on every available measure. Behind it come 360 Search from Qihoo 360, Sogou, owned by Tencent since 2021, and Microsoft's filtered mainland edition of Bing. Google has had no mainland search service since 2010.

The more important recent fact is about the size of the market, not its division. The China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC), the state body that publishes China's official internet statistics, counted 782.06 million search engine users in December 2025, or 69.5% of internet users. A year earlier it had counted 877.82 million and 79.2%. That is the first fall in the series, a drop of roughly 96 million users, and CNNIC attributes it to AI search products.

Every engine on this page operates under Chinese content law. A search engine serving mainland users must hold an ICP licence (the permit required to run a website in mainland China) and must filter results as the authorities require. That legal condition, more than any difference in technology, explains why the leading engines are domestic.

The Chinese search engines

Baidu

Baidu runs its own crawler, Baiduspider, and its own index. Before founding it, Robin Li had developed and patented RankDex, a method of ranking pages by their hyperlinks. Baidu listed on Nasdaq in August 2005 and added a Hong Kong listing in March 2021. Its Form 20-F for 2025, filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, reports total revenues of RMB 134,598 million in 2023, RMB 133,125 million in 2024 and RMB 129,079 million in 2025, two consecutive annual declines. The same filing says online marketing remains a primary source of revenue and that "the increasing prevalence of AI-powered search engines and virtual assistants is fundamentally altering user behavior."

360 Search

Qihoo 360 launched so.com in 2012 and rebranded it haosou.com in early 2015. Wikipedia, citing Marbridge Consulting, records its share of unique search visitors reaching 10.52%. Qihoo agreed a take-private worth about US$9.3 billion in December 2015 and now trades in Shanghai. StatCounter still labels it "Haosou".

Sogou

Sogou launched on 3 August 2004 as Sohu's search product. Tencent merged its own Soso search into Sogou in 2013 and completed a full takeover on 23 September 2021. It has not shut down; it operates inside Tencent's messaging products, smaller than it was.

Why Google is not in Chinese search

Google ran a censored mainland service, google.cn, from 26 January 2006. On 12 January 2010 it published "A new approach to China" on its official blog, announcing that after a cyberattack originating in China it was no longer willing to continue censoring results on google.cn. On 22 and 23 March 2010 google.cn began redirecting to Google's Hong Kong site. On 30 June 2010 Google replaced the automatic redirect with a link, to keep its ICP licence. Google's mainland search effectively ended there.

Google's share at the time of its exit is uncertain. Wikipedia cites Analysys International for 29% in 2010, a figure tagged on Wikipedia as needing clarification, so it is a rough indication only.

Project Dragonfly, a censored search prototype for China reported by The Intercept in August 2018, was reported shut down that December; both are press accounts, not Google statements.

Google's departure did not slow Chinese search. CNNIC counted 281.34 million search users in December 2009 and 375 million in December 2010, growth of 33.1% in the year Google left. The market's growth went to domestic engines. StatCounter shows Google at 1.46% in China for September 2026, which is mostly VPN users and visitors rather than a mainland user base.

The regulator record: rules every engine follows

China's search market is shaped less by competition rulings than by content and data law. Baidu, like every mainland engine, operates under the Cybersecurity Law (2017), the Data Security Law (2021) and the Personal Information Protection Law (2021), with content rules administered by the Cyberspace Administration of China. Engines must filter results and must retain user data and, on lawful request, produce it to the authorities.

Two consequences follow. First, a foreign engine can serve mainland users only by accepting the same filtering, which Google declined in 2010 and Microsoft accepted for Bing China. Second, the choice between Chinese engines is not a privacy choice: all of them operate under the same regime.

CNNIC's count: search users fell for the first time

CNNIC's twice-yearly Statistical Report on China's Internet Development is the only official count of how many people in China use search engines. It counts users, not engine shares.

For fifteen years the share of Chinese internet users who searched held close to 80%. Mobile was already central by June 2015, with 454.34 million mobile search users, 76.5% of mobile internet users. Then, in the first half of 2025, penetration dropped by about ten points.

The 57th report, published in early 2026, explains the fall in one sentence. Translated carefully, it says the user scale of traditional search engines was affected by intelligent search products, leading to a decline in business revenue. The same report counts 602 million users of generative AI. The roughly 96 million decline is calculated from CNNIC's own table rather than stated in its text.

One caution belongs beside that number. A ten-point drop within six months may partly reflect how CNNIC classifies AI-search use, with some activity counted under a different heading. CNNIC does not say so, and this page does not claim it. What can be said is that the official count fell, and that the official explanation is AI.

Chinese search engine market share: why no reliable figure exists

No Western tracker publishes a credible query share for China. StatCounter's China table for September 2026, all platforms, reads: Baidu 46.65%, Bing 21.76%, Yandex 14.98%, Haosou 12.26%, Sogou 2.61%, Google 1.46%. A month earlier it read Baidu 59.26%, Bing 18.92% and Yandex 11.41%.

They are given here to be recognized and set aside. Baidu moved 12.6 points in one month. Yandex, a Russian engine, at 15% of Chinese search does not describe Chinese users. StatCounter's Chinese panel is small and skewed toward sites carrying its tracker, which tend to be internationally facing, and it is distorted by VPN traffic. One contaminated row taints the rest.

Two further structural problems affect any share figure for China. A large and growing part of Chinese search happens inside apps, including WeChat search, Douyin, Xiaohongshu and Taobao, none of which appear in a search engine share table. And AI assistants, on CNNIC's own reading, are now taking search users. The defensible statements are that Baidu leads, that its revenue has declined two years running, and that the official number of search users has fallen.

CNNIC's 57th report is the primary source for the 2025 figures; it is in Chinese.

Common misconceptions

• "Google is blocked, so Baidu has 90%." No reliable current figure says so; Baidu's measured share depends on the tracker.
• "Bing has a fifth of Chinese search." That is StatCounter's panel, not Chinese users.
• "Chinese search is still growing." CNNIC's count of search users fell by about 96 million in 2025.

Checked 27 October 2026. CNNIC figures run to December 2025; StatCounter figures are for September 2026.

Frequently asked questions

Sources

• China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC) — The 57th Statistical Report on China's Internet Development (第57次中国互联网络发展状况统计报告) (2026, PDF)
• China Internet Network Information Center — The 55th Statistical Report on China's Internet Development (2025, PDF)
• China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC) — The 36th Statistical Report on Internet Development in China (2015, PDF)
• China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC) — The 27th Statistical Report on Internet Development in China (2011, PDF)
• cnnic.cn/NMediaFile/2025/0730/MAIN1753846666507QEK67ZS9DH.pdf
• sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1329099/000119312526109289/d38065d20f.htm
• googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/01/new-approach-to-china.html
• gs.statcounter.com/search-engine-market-share/all/china
• en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_China
• en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qihoo_360
• en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baidu