SERP Features Beyond Google – Analysing China
For many of us, especially in English-speaking markets, Google dominates the search engine landscape. Search Engine Optimization became synonymous with Google Optimization. But it’s important to remember that this isn’t the case everywhere.
As SEOs, we can’t simply put our heads in the sand when it comes to the wider global search engine landscape - it’s essential to understand the bigger picture, and what we can learn from it. Looking beyond Google means understanding the whole industry better, instead of depending on a single tech giant marking the trends and narrative. Especially considering that Google has been officially ruled a monopoly in the recent DOJ trial, and while the decision has been announced already, the consequences of the ruling are still unknown and we might be bound to see some sort of Google shake-up. Times are changing for Google as we speak, so there’s never been a better time to step aside and look around.
One of the most significant examples of escaping Google’s monopoly is China - the biggest market where Google has been replaced by an entire ecosystem of Search Engines, with its own rules, algorithms, and challenges.
The recent ruling against Google in the United States, which found the company guilty of monopolising the online search market, has sparked discussions about a possible breakup of the tech giant into smaller companies, as a potential outcome of historical antitrust actions. This scenario draws immediate parallels to China's search engine market, where different platforms serve distinct purposes. Baidu, for example, offers a range of services from news to cloud storage, while Shenma focuses on mobile search and e-commerce through its integration with Alibaba.
Such diversity in search engine functions in China draws a potential pathway for the future of search beyond Google's current model, suggesting a more segmented and specialised approach. While it’s only one of the possible outcomes that could emerge globally if regulatory actions lead to a restructuring of Google's operations, there couldn’t be a better moment to have a close look at the Search Engine market in China.
This article documents the second part of my extensive research on SERP Features Beyond Google. You can find the first part here: Trends in Search Features from Bing, Brave Search and DuckDuckGo
The Chinese Search Engine Marketplace
In order to analyse the Search Experience from a more complex perspective, it is necessary to look beyond the one and only monopoly - Google. China is the one market in the world where Google search is not present. That is due to nuanced censorship and compliance requirements Google has decided not to meet back in 2010, when the giant exited the Chinese market for good, leaving space for a new search and web ecosystem to grow.
Due to a Google-free internet ecosystem, China has developed its own trends and tools that make a great study field.
For the purpose of this analysis, we focus on two major players in China: Baidu and Shenma:
Baidu holds the largest search engine market share in China by far, so is an obvious choice of focus to analyse the environment.
Shenma, although not quite as strong in overall market share, does hold the second largest share of the mobile search engine market. In a world increasingly focused on mobile devices, this makes Shenma a particularly interesting case study.
The SERP study: methodology
I originally decided to analyse the state of SERP features beyond Google in order to learn how much of the current Google UX is simply dictated by the giant itself, and how much is in fact the wider SEO and Search reality the users want.
I believe it’s important to draw a line between which features belong to one specific product (i.e. Google) and which are adopted by the wider selection of search engines. We often use the words ‘Search Engine’ and Google as synonyms, forgetting there is so much more out there.
For this investigation I followed the same methodology as my previous SERP features study.
For each search engine, I’ve considered the search experience as served to the user at the time of the analysis, without being logged in.
I used a single search query that triggers a variety of SERP features: ‘Barcelona’.
Why did I choose this query?
High-volume keyword globally, including China, which has had an ongoing touristic interest over the last couple of years,
Easy to translate to Mandarin, as the accurate spelling has no double meaning or unexpected search intent behind it, meaning it is very much comparable to the study done in English. The simplified Chinese spelling of Barcelona is 巴塞罗那 and will be used as such in both Chinese Search Engines that will be analysed.
Very ambiguous intent – Barcelona refers to anything travel related: flights, hotels, weather, history. At the same time being relevant to FC Barcelona football club: match results, game schedules and news surrounding the club and the players. Varied intents = plenty of SERP features.
TL;DR - It’s a universally great query to test in different languages and its ambiguity has a big chance of triggering a wide variety of SERP features.
Baidu analysis
Baidu is an internet company from China, with features and services similar to those of Google, for instance search, maps, news, video, an encyclopaedia, anti-virus software, and internet TV.
Baidu has a dominant presence in China, controlling a significant portion of the country's search engine market share. As of December 2023, Baidu held 66.52% of the market share, although other sources report figures as high as 76%.
On a mission, restricted
The name "Baidu" was inspired by a Chinese poem that speaks of the search for one's dreams despite distractions, reflecting the company's mission as a search engine. The lyrical mission, however, romanticises Baidu’s role and stirs attention away from its deep political implications. This SE has very close ties with the PRC Government and successfully complies with the strict local regulations to censor search results and other content.
This is related to a unique internet experience for Chinese users, often referred to as the "Great Firewall of China". This digital barrier is one-sided, allowing Westerners to access Chinese websites just like the locals do, while the Chinese netizens have no access to occidental websites like Facebook, YouTube or Wikipedia.
The sole fact that Google refused to comply with the local regulatory constraints in China has kept the Western search engine behind the Firewall, paving the way to a creation of the local internet ecosystem. Google not being present has shaped the Search Engine market in China and created the opportunity for Baidu to create and maintain its dominance.
Baidu’s position has remained fairly unchallenged, with only some domestic competitors popping up in recent years. One of these Search Engine competitors – Shenma – will be analysed in this piece as well, for contrast.
Beyond Just Search
Baidu, as a leading Chinese tech company, has been actively involved in developments beyond Search. Baidu's Apollo project is an open-source software platform designed to foster collaboration across the automotive industry, positioning Baidu as a significant player in the autonomous vehicle sector.
Baidu & Artificial Intelligence
Baidu's AI model, ERNIE 4.0, represents significant advancement in generative artificial intelligence, with improvements in understanding, generation, reasoning, and memory. The model, which rivals OpenAI's GPT-4, is being integrated into Baidu's search engine and other applications, promising to transform the user experience by providing customised responses to queries.
Baidu & Quantum Computing
In the realm of quantum computing, Baidu has expressed ambitions to integrate this technology into various industries, aiming to bring the world closer to a reality where "everyone can quantum". However, in a surprising turn of events, Baidu's quantum computing project has recently been shut down, with the research being donated to the government-run Beijing Academy of Quantum Information Sciences (BAQIS). This move mirrors a similar decision by Alibaba, another Chinese tech giant, which also exited the quantum computing race only months prior to Baidu.
Despite these developments, Baidu continues to be a key player in the tech industry, with ongoing contributions to AI development and autonomous driving.
User Generated Content – not just Google’s domain
In order to understand Baidu’s SERPs, there are two Baidu products that require initial introduction:
Baidu Tieba - An online community forum launched by Baidu in 2003, where users can create and join "Tiebas" (forums) centred around specific topics or interests. Functioning similarly to Reddit, the platform allows users to post text, images, videos, and links, and engage with others through upvoting, downvoting, and commenting. As of 2021 data, Baidu Tieba gathered over 23 million communities and registered 466 million visits, highlighting its role as a vibrant hub for information exchange and social interaction in China, that’s relevant in spite of the social media boom.
Baidu Baike - Baidu Baike is a collaborative, web-based encyclopaedia owned and produced by Baidu, often compared to Wikipedia. Launched in 2006, it has grown to become one of the most visited websites in China, featuring a wide range of content from traditional encyclopaedic entries to food recipes, film products or internet programs. Baidu Baike's entries are visibly featured in Baidu's search engine results, making it a very prominent resource to appear in. As with any Baidu-owned product, its content is semi-regulated, adhering to the censorship rules.
Not only are both Baidu products standalone websites, they also occupy a significant part of SERPs, making them common search features that are neatly integrated with Baidu SERP.
Baidu SERP Analysis
The best way to understand how these elements blur the line between SERP features and the Search Engine itself, is to demonstrate it, which we have done using query ‘Barcelona’, which in Mandarin Chinese is 巴塞罗那.
The search will be conducted while connected to a Hong Kong location via VPN. There hasn’t been a single trusted VPN provider with a server in Mainland China, hence the closest location has been picked. As mentioned already, Baidu serves the same results outside of China, so this shouldn’t affect the outcomes.
Baidu is the only eastern Search Engine with any documented information about its SERP features. One of the most complete pieces on the matter by Dan Taylor, Baidu SEO: A Guide to SERP Features & Ranking Signals published in 2018 has barely aged, due to little developments in the Baidu SERP design. This detailed piece explains all possible SERP features and is a great resource for those interested in SEO in China.
Interestingly, even back in 2018 Baidu had already put a huge emphasis on promoting their own services within the SERP features. Most of the features are designed solely to display Baidu sources in a prominent way. This part has not changed at all, as we will find in the analysis below. SERP features in Baidu are not standard organic results in my opinion.
Our current study isn’t nearly as comprehensive as Dan’s, and does not aim to be – the aim is a qualitative comparison instead.
SERP observations
Organic results virtually non-existent - It’s clear there are hardly any organic results in Baidu as we know them from Google or Bing - the standard 10 links are just non-existent. Almost every single item displayed within Baidu Search is their own SERP feature or product, giving a lot of protagonism to User Generated Content sites that they own. The recent Reddit and Quora surge in visibility in Google seems like nothing, compared to Baidu’s SERPs. The line between organic, paid and SERP features is super blurry even to a trained SEO eye.
Christina Xu, Baidu expert and Founder at China Marketing Corp agrees that the prominence of Baidu’s own products in SERPs is huge:
Baidu Search Features breakdown
Search Filters (1) are the very first SERP feature, at the top of the page. It is a filter-like option to specify what the query is about and what the intent is. This is a fairly similar solution to what’s been seen on Bing, in part 1 of this study.
Baidu Baike (2.1) is the very top result on the left. While its design resembles a featured snippet, it is a Baidu Encyclopaedia, an equivalent of Wikipedia. This snippet consists of a video miniature, some formatted text and 4 sitelinks. It could be confused with a regular organic result, as there’s no visible URL, but there is a small annotation just below the snippet, linking to Baidu Baike.
Baidu Tieba (3) is the next SERP feature, powered by some User Generated Content related to FC Barcelona. The Tieba snippet does not only link to several recent threads on the forum, it also highlights the number of the users and posts within this community.
Baidu Ads (AD) The third result on the left is in fact an ad referring to short term flat rentals in Barcelona. It is worth noting that the information it’s an ad is extremely subtle (bottom-right corner).
Video snippet (4) this feature contains a total of 6 videos shown in a space of 2 rows. Most of the videos (4 out of 6) come from Baidu’s own short video platform, Haokan.
Baidu Sports (5) is one of Baidu’s own web services, showing fixtures for some of the last games Barca took part in, in the form of a visual snippet with club logos. Once again, Baidu’s own product is given extra prominence within the SERP.
Top recent queries (6) related to the keyword Barcelona are featured next, as a SERP feature. There are 5 suggested topics, all of which link to the relevant SERP for each of the queries. Keeping the users within the Baidu ecosystem seems like an obvious aim here.
A music feature (7), in the form of a song player, is our following SERP element. Turns out there’s a Chinese singer Jiuyin who has released a song entitled ‘Barcelona’. There are several versions of this song, linking to various music streaming services from China. No signs of Ed Sheeran’s versions, seems like he didn’t make it there yet.
Baidu Maps (8). The map miniature for Barcelona is shown together with a shortcut to type a particular place name.
News snippet (9), with top 3 news headlines about Barcelona at the time of search. Interesting to note it occupies quite a substantial space in the SERP. It so happens that in the moment of conducting the search, FC Barcelona dominated the news headlines.
Finally, the very first standard organic result (organic) comes after 9 Featured snippets and an ad. It’s Weibo – a Chinese microblogging website. Once more it’s UGC content, but this time it’s run independently from Baidu – by Sina Corporation.
Baidu Baike (2.2) - Yet another encyclopaedia result , this time referring to the football club instead of the city. The video snippet, some facts and sitelinks are featured within the feature, making it occupy quite a bit of space.
One more result from Sina just below, this time dedicated to FC Barcelona. And only a second organic result overall in this entire SERP (organic).
Related searches (10) is the very last feature from the left-hand side of this SERP. It is a feature with 10 suggested subjects. Interestingly, it’s different from the other search suggestions from the middle of the SERP, these ones had a title that can be translated to ‘Everyone is still searching’.
The right hand side of this SERP is modest. There are only two elements:
‘Related search’ entities (11) is a knowledge graph-style feature listing other autonomous regions from Spain.
‘Hot Searches’ (12) can be treated as a snippet from Baidu Trends – with topics that have no connection to my query at all.
Shenma analysis
Shenma is a 100% mobile-only search engine in China, owned by the Alibaba Group. It is specifically designed for the Chinese market and is gaining importance due to the booming smartphone market. As of January, Shenma held a 4.4% market share in terms of mobile search in China, making it the second most popular mobile search engine after Baidu. However, other sources suggest a slightly lower market share.
Shenma, not exactly a Search Engine
Shenma positions itself as the "experts in mobile search" and comes preinstalled with UC, one of the most popular browsers in China.
Shenma's search results are heavily impacted by Alibaba's e-commerce data, making it a popular choice for online shopping searches. Its affiliation with Alibaba allows the search results to include direct links to product pages on Taobao and Tmall (both are Alibaba’s ecommerce brands).
As Shenma describes itself on their website: ‘I am neither an app store nor Baidu, but my interaction method is more mobile and I understand what you want.’
And it’s true – Shenma is entirely mobile-first.
Shenma's approach bridges the gap between a traditional search engine and ecommerce, catering to users' needs for shopping, apps, and books. With its mobile-centric approach and strategic partnerships, it taps into the growing trend of mobile internet usage in China.
Shenma SERP Analysis
Following our current analysis method, the query Barcelona (in Chinese ‘巴塞罗那’) has been searched for in Shenma’s mobile search engine (there’s no desktop version at all - just an app or a mobile URL), while connected to a VPN in Hong Kong.
Considering the SERP is 100% mobile, there will be obvious differences in design and usability. Although it’s clear we are not comparing apples to apples in this case, this part of the test will expand the findings and add a new, different perspective to what the future of search engines might be.
SERP Observations
Visuals - The first outstanding aspect of this SERP is the fact that it is extremely visual, with photos or logos present for the vast majority of the snippets.
Search filters - There aren’t any search filters, options or tabs within this SERP. No suggested queries either. Essentially there is no way to redefine anything at all. The results are as simple as they get.
Organic results vs search features - There are a total of only “traditional” 5 organic results in this SERP, as opposed to 9 SERP features. It is evident that the SERP features in this case completely monopolise the search experience, with all the organic links being hidden way below the fold.
Shenma Search Features breakdown
Football Results (1): The very first result is a SERP feature related to FC Barcelona, with the club logo and some basic stats about the team. The club info is accompanied by the fixtures from the last matches.
News 3-pack (2): The next SERP feature is a news 3-pack, on the day of the screenshot all of the 3 news items are related to the football club. Interestingly, two out of the three news pieces have 3 image miniatures featured. The text is limited to the title, without any text snippet or description of any sort.
Knowledge panel (3): Below the news, we are presented with a knowledge panel about Barcelona.
Definition panel (3.1): Interestingly, Shenma takes the snippet from Baidu Baike (encyclopedia), so from the competitor search engine. Considering that Shenma has a limited line of digital products, and it does not try to compete with Baidu in the knowledge area, it makes sense that the informational content from the rival is being featured.
Top tourist sights (3.2): The very next snippet is related to the most known tourist sights and is powered by C-trip, a known Chinese travel website similar to Booking.com or Tripadvisor. The interesting thing about this SERP feature is the fact that every tourist attraction has a star rating and a quote from the reviews.
Related Searches (4): In the middle of the SERP, we are presented with 8 query suggestions, related to our search: la liga, watching matches online, references to el clasico. Pretty much all queries are sport-related and long-tail.
Image panel (5): This search feature is powered by another website from Alibaba Group – quark.cn. Smart move on Shenma’s side – if image search is not its strong trait, why not take advantage of the external resource from the corporate group.
Related entities (6): Below the image panel, there’s a few references to entities related to our search: a list of other European football clubs. The links go directly to the new SERPs for each of the clubs. On top of FC Barcelona, we have Real Madrid, Bayern Munich and Manchester United.
Related videos (7): a feature powered by bilibili.com – a Chinese video hosting platform centred around the anime, comics and gaming communities. Once again, Shenma delegates some features to the third-party sites instead of trying to provide it all.
ORGANIC: The following part of the SERP is populated by the classic organic “blue links”, or at least what resembles them the most. This is the first part of the SERP with any traditional organic listings at all, that aren’t SERP features – and it’s the very final part of the page. Interestingly, one of the top organic results is Baidu Tieba, the online community site comparable to reddit. Shenma does not shy away from featuring its competitors. Also what resembles Google’s traditional ten blue links the most is still way more visual and colourful than any Google SERP tends to be these days.
Related searches (8): The very last part of the SERP, below pagination, features a list of related search queries. The highlighted related topics circulate mostly around football. This feature has appeared before (SERP feature number 4) but the set of related queries is completely unique this time.
The simplistic design of the SERP and the lack of any filtering within the results encourages the SERP feature interaction over picking any of the traditional organic search results. It is apparent that the 0-click searches in this case make up a huge amount of searches, probably much higher than we tend to observe in Google these days.
Trends from Asia – a sign of Google’s future?
As SEOs, we’re competing in an increasingly globalised marketplace, which means it’s even more important to have an understanding of the international search environment beyond that which we’re familiar with.
Closer to home, we continue to contend with Google’s domination of the search environment and prioritisation of its own results - these global SERPs may also give us insight on what to expect in the future.
Both Baidu and Shenma are heavily self-indulgent – on one hand within their own product ecosystem (Baidu) or where the products are lacking, with collaborations and group-owned websites (Shenma).
It is apparent that SERP features lead the way in the Chinese Search Engines we’ve analysed, and dominate the experience, making the standard organic results barely visible. 0-click searches are a common problem in those search engines, with levels of those searches potentially reaching way higher levels than in Google - having in mind how prominent the SERP Features are in those search engines.
Google has been receiving a lot of criticism related to dominating SERPs with their own products and features. After analysing the SERPs in China, I believe that it’s clear that Google is merely following the same global trend as other search engines, and is still behind compared to the other big industry players. It seems like the SERP feature dominance is inevitable for this business model.
The small crack in Baidu’s market dominance, in the form of the smaller but highly-focused competitor Shenma, has proved to be an interesting case study to consider in the context of Google’s future. It begs the question of whether an all-in-one search engine is really a future-proof answer? Or could individual, more specialised offerings present an alternative? The upcoming outcomes of the U.S. vs. Google Antitrust Trial could even present a perfect opportunity for an existing or new player to emerge and find their own niche, especially if the DOJ mandates big changes in how Google operates from now on.
Article by
Natalia Witczyk
Natalia is a Barcelona-based International SEO Consultant and founder of Mosquita Digital.
Natalia is an International SEO in the truest sense - taking not only a multilingual approach but embracing alternative search engines to create scalable strategies for global brands.
As a seasoned professional, fluent in 3 languages (and learning a few more as a hobby), she is not just a well-respected International SEO specialist, but also a globally recognized industry author, speaker, and search awards judge.
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