Young people, mostly male and well-educated, are the mainstay of China's search engine market, according to survey results released yesterday at a conference that included industry giants Google, Yahoo and Baidu.

The survey reports that Net surfers aged between 26 and 35 three-fourths of them male account for the bulk of search engine users, rising from 24 percent in 2005 to 45.7 percent this year.

And the majority are well educated, with 46 percent holding a bachelor's degree, according to Beijing-based CCID Consulting Company which surveyed 30,000 valid questionnaires in a month.

"We find that the distribution of the users is balanced through different regions, although Jiangsu, Guangdong and Beijing had the largest number of users," said Chen Wen, general manager of CCID's Internet & E-Commerce Consulting Centre.

The survey also indicates that more than half of the users prefer home-grown Baidu by a clear margin to international search providers such as Google and Yahoo, which saw their market share dip last year.

"But our analysis shows that Google and Yahoo are attracting more new users in China than Baidu due to strong promotion," Chen said.

Liu Jun, engineering director of Google China, contended that different analyses threw up different results. "I'm confident that we will perform much better in the future, with new users on our side."

The CCID's report says China's search engine market is expanding at an average 60 percent, rising to 83 million users this year. "In the next five years, the market will show growth of 35 to 40 percent," Chen said.

Industry revenues rose from 1.18 billion yuan (US$ 150 million) last year to 1.7 billion yuan (US$ 217 million) this year; and are forecast to hit 7.8 billion yuan (US$ 996 million) by 2011.

(China Daily December 20, 2006))