The second half of search: Will WeChat do big search?

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In the just-concluded WeChat 2021 Open Class PRO, a very clear signal was released: WeChat search has a promising future.

Samuel from the WeChat Soso team mentioned the use case of Soso in a WeChat public class: "You can search using WeChat." WeChat Soso hopes that when users have any questions or difficulties, they will think of using WeChat to search.

In addition, WeChat is continuously increasing its openness. At the WeChat Open Class, an invitation was directly extended to partners and developers in the WeChat ecosystem: "There is a box here, you are the protagonists, and we are just a connector." For third-party developers, this new entrance that means opportunities, imagination and business is undoubtedly very attractive.

On the other hand, the search demand initiated by WeChat users is growing explosively. At the product level, users are still voting with their feet.

According to data disclosed by WeChat Open Class, WeChat Search's monthly active users reached 500 million. Judging from the number of users alone, it is almost the same as the 544 million monthly active users of the APP disclosed by Baidu in its Q3 2020 financial report (September 2020).

There will be new changes in the search world.

WeChat has opened many entrances around search

WeChat search has actually been around for many years.

At first, it only provided a finder for WeChat official accounts. Later, it gradually supported the search of official account articles, Moments, and city services. Later, as mini programs emerged, WeChat Search also supported account searches for mini programs. In 2020, WeChat Search achieved full open access to content, services, and brands.

WeChat search is becoming more open. The official interpretation is: search needs should not be boxed in, they should appear wherever curiosity arises .

Ordinary WeChat users have already sensed the convenience brought by WeChat search. When reading an article on a public account and finding an unfamiliar word, they can search for it by simply swiping the word; when someone posts a very beautiful landscape photo in the circle of friends, they used to have to type a comment to ask "where is this", but now they can just long press the picture and search on WeChat to call up related information.

In the past, when chatting about weather, emojis, music, restaurants, and videos, you had to jump out of the chat context and search and find in different places. In WeChat search, you can search while chatting without interrupting the chat context. You can directly pull up the search, find content and knowledge directly, and share it directly. The whole operation is coherent and smooth.

Last year, WeChat chat scenarios already supported "live links". Users will enjoy using it because it is so simple that they can just click on it. The underlying support for this experience is actually search. The product path set by WeChat Search is: when chatting, enter a "#" and then add any search term. After sending the chat text, the recipient does not need to enter anything, just click this "#" to initiate an intelligent search.

What to eat, what to drink, what to play, which flight is it, when will it arrive, all at a glance. It is also useful in finding express delivery, sending stock prices, sending car models, etc.

Why are the giants all planning search?

Search is a recognized traffic portal and has always been a battleground for industry giants. The domestic search landscape has been changing over the years. In addition to technical capabilities, traffic and user minds also play a big role.

In addition to Baidu search, Baidu has also done simple search with do-not-disturb positioning. Baidu has a position in the minds of users. With the rise of mobile Internet, major mobile apps have become independent. Baidu cannot get a comprehensive source of information in search, which directly affects the accuracy and scope of search. In the past two years, Baidu has also made efforts to create all content-related content and information flows such as pictures, texts, and videos. However, the problem of information islands remains unsolved.

In 2013, Ali's Shenma search once grew very fast, ranking just behind Baidu; but due to its heavy reliance on UC traffic, Shenma's voice became smaller and smaller as UC data declined. In 2016, Ali launched Quark, which focuses on clean search. According to Jiguang Big Data, Quark's daily active users average around 8 million. As for the former Shenma search, the data is so low that it cannot be checked.

Microsoft Bing has a good technical accumulation, but it does not have a large market share in China. 360 Search has also gradually faded. It is worth mentioning Sogou Search, which once occupied about 10% of the market share. At present, its growth has also slowed down.

In 2019, ByteDance was rumored to be working on search. This attracted a lot of attention. In their recruitment, they mentioned that "we will build a general search engine with a more ideal user experience from 0 to 1." The official did not give more explanations. Two years later, according to Jiguang Big Data, the current daily active search of Toutiao is between 40,000 and 50,000. This level is obviously not enough to match the search layout of a large company.

In addition to the advantages of content and traffic, Bytedance’s search business is also more importantly due to the fact that the company is growing too fast and its traffic is about to peak. After encountering setbacks in globalization, it is in urgent need of finding new traffic in the country.

What is the confidence of WeChat in search?

WeChat is a national app

Almost all users in China have WeChat. Searching on WeChat means that users no longer need to install any additional apps and can search directly with WeChat.

A search expert who witnessed Sogou's growth from scratch said that WeChat search has been around for a long time and there is no problem with the technology accumulation.

The deeper the needs a product can meet, the less pressure it will have to move up. WeChat has more than one billion users and a thriving ecosystem. From a user experience perspective, it is very smooth to search with WeChat. This is a real demand scenario that has not been well solved. If the search matching of each scenario is done well, WeChat users can complete a one-stop search without any perception.

Only by benefiting others can we last long

Speaking of the underlying foundation of search - content, the major mobile APPs are isolated from each other. It is not an exaggeration to call our "Internet" "unconnected".

As early as the early days of WeChat Mini Programs, WeChat proposed openness. Mini Programs are not "small", they are all-encompassing, and it is not surprising that an operating system can be built on them. In this year's WeChat Open Class, WeChat sent a strong signal of openness regarding WeChat Search.

The WeChat SouSou team has compiled the top 30 search requests from the SouSou backend. It breaks down the real and trivial search needs of users in many fields in detail. This will also become the underlying logic of the WeChat SouSou team in product development: working with external ecosystem partners to better meet user needs.

Search is a demand scenario initiated by users . "Without a clear leader, user search problems are becoming more and more difficult and longer." For platforms and partners, every demand corresponds to an opportunity. He even appeased the subconscious desire of ecological partners to spend resources to grab the leader, "Don't expect to use a resource to increase traffic. Optimize the search experience with us to achieve long-term, sustainable and healthy traffic growth."

WeChat's search ecosystem can also take care of small and medium-sized developers . Because "search has very good scalability, it is integrated into many scenarios of WeChat. As long as users have their own expressions, not only top developers, but also very small mid- and long-tail developers can also connect well with their users." As a platform, WeChat introduces more high-quality content and services in order to "give users a better experience and promote a virtuous cycle."

Mobile search second half

At the WeChat 2021 Open Course PRO, the WeChat team did not mention the idea of ​​creating a purely independent search engine. Samuel from the WeChat Search team even emphasized the ecosystem, stressing that WeChat Search is only one part of the WeChat ecosystem. What the platform product does is to "create a more accurate connection between better and more appropriate content and services and users."

However, a technical expert in the search field said after listening to the WeChat open class, "Why do I feel that WeChat is also going to do big search?" Think about it, in the future, when you search on WeChat, you can find all the content you want to search, so do you need more search software? In the eyes of technical experts, "search is technically mature and not difficult. The key is whether users have search needs in business, or how to guide users to change their search habits into new entry points."

Of course, there are technical barriers. However, at the implementation level, search and recommendation technologies are of the same origin, and the most basic technology is NLP (natural language processing), and large companies have accumulated a lot in this area. In addition to technology, it involves competition at the user demand (traffic), content, and mental level.

The essence of Internet business is the same type of business: connecting people, information and services.

For a company that has reached the scale of an Internet giant, when it comes to making a mature product or function, it does not necessarily have to benchmark or compete with anyone else. Instead, it is more about improving its own product matrix and heightening its business moat.

Baidu has excellent technology in the search field and is working hard to layout content through "search + information flow + content", but it is an indisputable fact that Baidu's growth is being diverted on the mobile side.

ByteDance's short video products have a clear advantage in traffic. However, search, as an active behavior with a very focused purpose, may be logically contrary to the subjective push of information flow. The former is to search and leave, while the latter is to occupy as much user time as possible. In addition, from the perspective of search itself, only information and videos are not enough. Questions and answers, encyclopedias, maps and other common services in user life scenarios are very much needed. ByteDance may need to make up for these shortcomings through self-operation or acquisitions.

Baidu Simple Search focuses on simplicity, and AliQuark emphasizes clean pages. These products have their own characteristics, but they do not meet core needs, and it is difficult to break through the user scale. If there is a search engine in the future that can meet the needs and provide a clean experience, then the user volume of the above two products today will be difficult to maintain.

With WeChat's status as a national application today, when WeChat starts to use open logic for search, it means that a new search that connects the most people and the broadest content ecosystem has entered the second half of mobile search with force.

The competition of search technology at a higher level is also reflected in long-tail queries. Hot queries are prioritized by all companies, and the difference is not too big, but the long-tail has little impact on the business and cannot be quickly mastered and perfected in a short period of time. It is a test of the team's genes and accumulation.

Suddenly I understand better what the WeChat Search team talked about in the WeChat 2021 Open Class PRO: WeChat backend receives a large number of diverse search requests every day. These active requests from users are at the technical and product levels. Every tiny search call-up is helping WeChat to perfect the most complex "long-tail queries" in the search field .

This is exactly what the technical experts mentioned above, the most difficult part of search. With WeChat’s user base of over 1.2 billion and the huge amount of searches generated every second, it is of positive significance for WeChat Search to improve its search accumulation.

What changes are happening?

In the past ten years of WeChat, Zhang Xiaolong and his product team have gained the label of "restraint" with excellent user experience. However, the game between commercialization and product experience is a delicate art of balance. WeChat's announcement of entering the search market also cannot avoid the unsolvable stubborn problem of the search industry: in the past twenty years, advertising has been almost the main source of income for search engines. Even Google, the holy land in the hearts of many users, is no exception.

With WeChat joining the game, how will it choose in the future?

Baidu has been criticized for 20 years, and ByteDance, which started to do search, also expressed its intention to optimize certain categories, such as medical information. But before everything is implemented, people will still remember the company's fundamental business logic: it relies on traffic and information flow advertising to achieve sustained growth.

In the first half of Internet search, you can first have search products, and then slowly add content. When competition comes to the mobile side, another logic also comes into being: you can first have content and users, and then derive search from user needs.

Some changes are happening and the inherent rules are being broken.

For example, in the niche e-commerce sector, in the past, people searched for goods, and many e-commerce search needs were monopolized and solidified within the e-commerce system. Today, in video and live broadcast scenarios, goods can also find people. This change means that valuable vertical information that was once monopolized and could not be reached even by Baidu Search in the past will be reasonably and fairly shared and even selected through platforms such as WeChat that connect everything.