Douyin, the popular short-video platform, is making its fourth attempt to break into the search market. After previous efforts with Toutiao Search, Wukong Search, and Lightning Search, it has now launched “Douyin Search” as its latest independent search app.
Unlike traditional search engines like Baidu, which show website links, Douyin Search focuses on content such as short videos, images, and texts created by its users. This approach seems to be Douyin’s strategy to compete in the ever-changing content world.
Douyin’s previous search ventures have struggled to gain traction.
Toutiao Search transformed into “You Shi,” focusing on food and life experiences. Wukong Search shifted toward AI tools, and Lightning Search disappeared shortly after its launch. These changes reflect ByteDance’s attempts to adjust to shifting user search habits, where platforms like Zhihu and Xiaohongshu are now competing with traditional search engines.
The core challenge for Douyin is meeting users’ evolving expectations.
As people search for specific content within short videos, accuracy becomes critical. Users need a search engine that not only delivers results quickly but also offers relevant answers. This is a difficult balance for Douyin to achieve.
Behind Douyin’s search ambitions lies its push to understand user needs more deeply, especially as the growth in short-video traffic slows.
By building an independent search app, Douyin hopes to create a new portal for traffic and content distribution. According to ByteDance, search plays a significant role in marketing and sales conversion, with brands like Buick seeing improved performance through Douyin’s search features.
However, Douyin faces several hurdles in its quest to compete with Baidu, which currently dominates China’s search engine market with a 69.09% share. User habits are hard to break, and short-video search presents unique challenges. It’s not easy to organize and retrieve relevant content from a rapidly growing library of videos, tags, and keywords.
Douyin’s potential for growth is evident, with 743 million monthly active users in 2023, surpassing Baidu’s 703 million. However, the platform’s focus on video may limit its ability to expand into new user habits. Additionally, with the rise of AI-driven search, Douyin must adapt to the growing importance of AI in improving search accuracy and content distribution.
Whether Douyin can succeed in this new search war remains to be seen. Its efforts to challenge Baidu signal a renewed battle in an old industry, as tech giants look for new strategies to reshape the search market.
Sources: Xinentropy
