Wandoujia In-App Search One Year Anniversary: ​​Connecting Application Scenarios to Provide Value-Added Experience

On October 16, 2014, Wandoujia held a product review meeting for in-app search in the third quarter of 2014, sharing with the public the latest product progress of in-app search. This review meeting was held exactly one year after Wandoujia first released its in-app search product.

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When it comes to search, the first thing that comes to mind is large search engine companies such as Google and Baidu. Why does Wandoujia also want to do in-app search? In general, Google and Baidu have achieved the highest level of Web-based search experience in the PC era, but in the mobile Internet era, the most basic component of the mobile Internet era is the application, not the Web. Users need to be able to consume content quickly after searching, such as buying tickets. There may be some very complicated operations in the consumption process, which requires the entire user experience to be very smooth and the performance to be very good, but these are not available on the Web.

In the era of mobile Internet, the content in apps actually consumes a lot of users' time. These contents mainly exist in apps, forming content islands, and these apps are not connected to each other. With the vision of breaking the information island of apps, Wandoujia has devoted itself to in-app search.

After a year of trials and tribulations, what are your thoughts on search within mobile apps?

1. Technical standards should be open

There are many companies in the field of in-app search, and each company has its own standards. Google's App Indexing, Quixey's AppURL, Facebook's Out app purchase, etc., all have different standards. These things have caused great troubles for developers. Developers want to access different platforms, but this is actually unnecessary. When Wandoujia released the in-app search protocol in March, it firmly believed that there was no need to invent words repeatedly, because these things already exist. Wandoujia uses very open technical standards that are fully compatible with the mainstream Google App Indexing and AppURL standards. This is very friendly to developers because they only need to develop once and can access it on various services. Until now, Wandoujia has always believed that openness is the cornerstone of the entire Internet, and openness is the most important thing.

2. Native apps have advantages

The discussion of Native App and Web App has been very hot. Of course, Native App has advantages when users consume content, just like the example of "Maoyan Movie". To buy a movie ticket, you have to choose the theater, choose the seat, and pay the bill. The whole process is very complicated. Native App can support complex delivery and has very good performance, which is a great advantage. Native App can also remember the user's personal identity information and user preferences, so the experience is better, which can be confirmed in some reports. According to Flurry's report, the time spent by users on APP and Mobile web in 2013 and 2014 was compared. From 2013 to 2014, the time spent on mobile apps on Mobile apps increased from 80% to 86%, and the time spent on the web decreased from 20% to 14%. This is the result of users voting with their feet. Native App still has the advantage in experience, and Wandoujia's in-app search technology has been very good at supporting Native App from the beginning. Apps without their own websites can also easily submit their data and content to Wandoujia.

3. Comprehensively bring a better discovery experience

At first, Wandoujia talked about the category of online video search, but gradually found that content from different categories actually has greater value. When Wandoujia first started video search, users should not and did not need to remember which content was in which app. Heavy video users will definitely have a deep experience and feeling. For example, to watch popular Korean dramas, they only go to iQiyi, to watch American dramas like "House of Cards" on Sohu, to watch self-made dramas on Youku, and to watch variety shows like "I Am a Singer", LeTV is the best. This is very difficult for users. With Wandoujia's video search, users only need to enter a few keywords in the search box to find all videos on the Internet, which is very convenient.

Wandoujia further discovered that comprehensiveness is not just for one category, but cross-category comprehensiveness is more potential and valuable. For example, if you are traveling to Japan, you search for "Japan" in Wandoujia, why can't you see more content directly in Wandoujia? For example, you can search for videos about Japan, music about Japan, or even travel guides and discounted air tickets. These contents are all within the scope of in-app search. These information and contents all come from different apps. This is exactly the problem that Wandoujia wants to solve, so it aggregates cross-category content to meet the needs of different categories of content on the same theme.

4. Users consume content in more diverse scenarios

Users consume content on their mobile phones because the mobile Internet is inherently mobile, and the scenarios for consuming content are more diverse. When Wandoujia was developing in-app search technology, we wanted to bridge the gap between in-app content and users, which was also the problem we wanted to help users solve in the first place. Through in-app search technology, users only need to search for a keyword to find content in a variety of applications. Bringing such convenience to users and helping users solve such problems is definitely not limited to entering a keyword in Wandoujia to experience it. In fact, there are many more convenient scenarios that are closer to users, which bring users and content closer.

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Three interviewees answered questions from reporters

In the past year, Wandoujia has received support from many partners and reached cooperation with 50 partners. There are more partners providing content and information that are still in the process of access. The content and information in these applications are the basis for Wandoujia to do in-application search. Wandoujia took 4 months to build the industry's leading search engine infrastructure and has begun to explore product practices. Within a year, 180 million users have not only found applications and games on Wandoujia, but also discovered a lot of wonderful content in applications, such as videos, wallpapers, music, travel tips, discount information, etc. through Wandoujia. 180 million users have experienced a very smooth in-application search experience. Wandouya has also gained a further understanding of in-application search in the past year's exploration. Wandoujia hopes to explore more usage scenarios so that users can find the content and information they want conveniently and quickly in more usage scenarios. This is Wandoujia's exploration and discovery of in-application search in the past year.