Search engine users in China reached 203 million by the end of 2008, with a yearly growth rate of 33.6 percent, according to the latest statistics released by the China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC) on the afternoon of March 5

The "2008 Report on Chinese Search Engine User Behavior" published by CNNIC points out that the search engine market continued to develop at a high speed in 2008, and more netizens began to try search engine services with different characteristics.

The report also shows that the great majority of search engine users were young people, with 70.1 percent under the age of 30. However, the number of middle-aged and senior users, as well as people with medium or higher education backgrounds has obviously increased. This is relevant to the drastic rise in the number of netizens both middle-aged and senior in recent years in China. This proves that the structural proportion of different groups of search engines users is being optimized.

At present, search engine users in China, whose income level is higher than the average internet population, have stronger payment capabilities, and as one of the fundamental applications, search engines are of relatively higher commercial value.

The report shows that leisure and entertainment were the two main reasons netizens used search engines, and their demand for searching daily life information was slightly higher than for professional tools.

Of the leisure and entertainment searches, music ranked highest, accounting for 32.6 percent. In addition, most of the searches related to daily life were for news. Of the searches for professional tools, the demand for professional data was the highest, with the selection rate reaching 31.3 percent.

By People's Daily Online