Boosted by AI & Product Differentiation, Sogou Search now firmly situates in No. 2 market position in China

In addition to having a large number of users, Sogou has sharpened its market edge in generated search traffic. According to the China Cross-Platform Search Market Research Report published by BDR, Sogou ranked second with a 16.1 percent share of China's cross-platform search traffic volume, during the first quarter of 2017. It should be noted that except for Sogou and Baidu, no other search engine holds a 10 percent or larger market share of China's cross-platform search traffic. The BDR report clearly lists Sogou Search leaping into the second position of the industry in the country.

Also, calculated by the rapidly increasing mobile search traffic, the Sogou Mobile Search Media Value Research Report released by iResearch has indicated a 76.7 percent usage rate for Sogou, showing that it is a major player in the market.

Sogou, now taking the second slot for online searches, both in the number of users and cross-platform search traffic volume, has become the only viable challenger against the top search engine in China. It has access to elevated recognition and popularity among vast Chinese users as well. Meanwhile, the CTR report has suggested that Sogou has surpassed Google in both brand awareness and brand recognition in the mainland China market, coming in the second place of the industry.

According to the iResearch report, if evaluated with brand prestige among the broad mobile search customers in China, users often define Sogou as a search engine that is "smart", "innovative", "multi-functional", "amusing", "young and dynamic".

Its industry-leading artificial intelligence (AI) R&D and sequential differentiated AI innovative products meet a whole array of user search demands. These are the key reasons behind Sogou's rising popularity among Chinese users and why it becomes the second largest search engine in the market.

Focusing on the core strategy of "Organic Interaction + Knowledge computing" and persisting in artificial intelligence development, Sogou is already the technology leader in the industry. Years ago, Sogou partnered with the renowned Tsinghua University, one of the top universities of China, established Tian Gong Institute of Intelligence Computing in April 2016 and dedicated to cutting-edge artificial intelligence R&D. The institute constantly makes breakthroughs in artificial intelligence technologies -- including image and voice recognition, language understanding, knowledge mapping and machine translation -- and incorporating AI achievements with search applications. 

For instance, Sogou's smart question replying system named "Li Zhi" or "Instant Answering" has proved to be a phenomenon in online searching. Any queries in the form of conventional expression of human languages could lead to instant answers, as Sogou's AI technology advances enable it to do cyber-wide data filtering, semantic analysis, question comprehension, information extraction, and deep distinguishing.

Aided by artificial intelligence, Sogou has made medication more interactive and much easier, too. Sogou Mingyi, developed by the company, now acts as de-facto "smart diagnosing assistant" for patients. By imitating dialogues between doctors and patients, it helps users get to know the category of their ailments and potential treatments, even before they see their doctors.

Moreover, Sogou has launched the first cross-linguistic search engine in the world -- Sogou English Search, which is based on the world's leading Sogou "Neural Machine Translation (NMT) technology, effectively breaking down the language barrier and enabling Chinese users to search and browse all English information more conveniently.

Sogou's rising to the number two spot in China's search market is attributed to its nonstop artificial intelligence research results and applications, and its strategy of sticking to differentiated development of innovative AI products. Sogou has successively launched vertical channels including Sogou Mingyi, Sogou Academic, and Sogou Facial Expression, after its exclusive access to valuable resources like Wechat and Zhihu (Chinese version of Quora). The resourceful content matrix provides users with diversified opinions and profound knowledge, satisfying users' various needs.

The CTR report suggests that China's search industry has entered a period of steady growth, primarily driven by technology innovations. Sogou with its forward-looking vision will continue to lead in the industry. Adhering to its leading artificial intelligence research and development and its set policy of providing the best and differentiated search services, Sogou is poised to win even more customers and obtain a larger slice of China's search share.

SOURCE Sogou