Baidu Third-Largest Search Property Worldwide, Beats Google in China

Baidu.com - the leading search engine in China - was the third-ranked search property worldwide with 3.4 billion searches in December 2007, capturing 5.2% of worldwide search share and beating out Microsoft Sites for third place, according to comScore.

Some 66.2 billion search queries were conducted worldwide in December, and Google Sites accounted for 62.4%, followed by Yahoo Sites (12.8%) and Baidu.

In China, Baidu.com led the search engine market in 4Q07 with a 60.1% share, and Google came second with a 25.9% share, followed by Yahoo China with 9.6%, according to Analysys International, Reuters reports.

Though Baidu’s share was flat compared with the third quarter, Google’s increased 2.2 percentage points (up from 23.7% in Q3). The US search giant recently launched a mobile SMS search service in China. See 3Q07 search share in China:

Together, Baidu, Google and Yahoo China account for nearly 96% of the Chinese search share; the search market totaled $131.3 million in revenue in the fourth quarter - nearly double that of 4Q06, according to Analysys International.