Google Loses Its Place In The Ranking For Search And Maps In China

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Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG) search and maps services ranking in China dropped to fourth and sixth place in China respectively due to the emergence of new players in the market.

Google Loses Its Place In The Ranking For Search And Maps In China

According to the search engine data released by CNZZ for the month of October, Google page views for the month declined from 5.1 percent to 4.72 percent due to the entry of Qihoo 360 search engine, which captured 9.64 percent market share.

Zhou Yongyi, chief executive officer of Qihoo 360 said the company aims to capture 15  to 20 percent share in the search engine market to “destroy” Baidu.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:BIDU)’s monopoly, which is the leading search engine in China. Baidu.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:BIDU) holds 72.97 percent share. Qihoo 360 was launched in August, and for just two months, the company is definitely growing fast at an average rate of 4.82 percent per month.

Other search engines in China including Sogou, ranked third with 7.83 percent share; Soso, ranked fifth with 3.68 percent share; Bing, ranked 6th with 0.52 percent share; Youdao,  ranked seventh with 0.31 percent share, and Yahoo, ranked eight with 0.25 percent.

The Chinese government ordered the search engine providers in China to sign an agreement to adhere to a fair competition policy in the country, and to stick with the robo.txt protocol, which provides instructions for search engine to crawl a particular website. Qihoo was accused of ignoring the robo.txt protocol and copying search results.

Meanwhile, Mobisights reported that Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG)’s mapping service landed sixth place in China with 9 percent market share during the third quarter of 2012. The report cited that the mapping service of the search engine giant declined due to Apple’s (NASDAQ:AAPL) decision to implement the iOS 6 maps, which uses the Autonavi’s data in China. Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) ditched Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG)’s mapping application due to disagreements over the voice guided navigation, which is available to all smartphones powered by the Android operating system.

Autonavi is the top mapping service provider in China with 25.9 percent market share. Baidu.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:BIDU) ranked second with 19.1 percent. Baidu aims to increase its mobile revenue through its mapping services. The company allocated a significant portion of its resources to boost its maps product, and decided to spin off its Location Based Services division as a separate business entity.

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