It’s official now. A day after we reported that Tencent had quietly opened Yuanbao Search at so.qq.com, Tencent Cloud announced on 11 November that 元宝搜索 (Yuanbao Search) has “officially launched”, IT之家 reports. Two things are new. The launch now has a formal announcement with sourcing claims attached, and Tencent has said how it will handle ads. On Monday we noted that we had seen no ads. Tencent has now explained what they will look like when they appear.
What Tencent confirmed
According to the announcement as relayed by IT之家 and 驱动中国 (Qudong):
- Two entry points: type so.qq.com into any browser, or update QQ Browser and choose “元宝搜索” as the search engine in its engine settings.
- A rebuilt pipeline: Tencent says the whole chain from understanding to retrieval, ranking and answer composition has been rebuilt on Yuanbao’s large-model capabilities.
- Index and scope: a “hundred-billion-scale” index (千亿级索引) covering the open web, WeChat Official Accounts, Channels and academic literature.
- 157 authoritative sources: results “prioritise content from authoritative institutions and official sources”, and Yuanbao Search has integrated 157 named authoritative sources.
- Academic mode: plain-language explanations of paper conclusions that keep the original evidence, plus one-click English translation.
- Input: typing, voice and photo search. Answers come as cards and charts where needed.
- “Recursive self-improvement” (RSI): Tencent says the product learns from real usage and feedback. That is the same RSI pitch Baidu used for its own search on 30 October.
Ads: labelled, separate and collapsible
This is the part search marketers should read twice. Qudong says Tencent “explicitly promises ads won’t masquerade as answers”. Ads appear as a separate module labelled “相关广告” (related ads), and users can fold the whole block away with a “收起广告” (collapse ads) control.
Li Ruizhang (李锐章), who leads Yuanbao Search’s web product, explained the thinking in comments reported by IT之家 via Sina Tech: “We don’t reject advertising, but users shouldn’t have to look for answers inside ads.” He said the industry’s current practice has blurred the line between ads and content, that this can quietly degrade the user experience, and that Tencent’s approach is “restraint” with clear separation. He also accepted that ads sometimes do meet user needs, for example when someone is looking for a specific service.
The Sogou question
The official announcement still doesn’t mention Sogou. ChainCatcher repeats what users saw on Monday: Sogou keyword searches can land directly on Yuanbao Search results, and Tencent is “gradually connecting” its existing search entry points to Yuanbao. It also notes that the API product was renamed Yuanbao Search in October, and cites official figures of hundreds of millions of daily calls powering more than 50 internal services, including Tencent Video, ima and WorkBuddy.
Our take
Most AI search launches in China have quietly blurred the line between ads and answers, and Tencent has picked that as the thing to differentiate on. A collapsible ad block is good for users. For advertisers it’s a gamble, because an ad unit that users can fold away will see lower CTR than one inside the answer. Wait to see the first paid formats before planning budgets around it.
For SEO, the “157 authoritative sources” list matters most, and Tencent hasn’t published it. If answers prefer official and institutional sources first, commercial sites are competing for whatever citation space is left, and Official Accounts content sits inside Tencent’s walled garden with a native advantage. As with our earlier coverage of the Yuanbao–Sogou stack, if you rely on Sogou traffic, check your referrers this week. Users won’t see a “Sogou” label on these results, so it is now Yuanbao, not Sogou, that decides what they see.