Baidu Upgrades Search Engine With New AI Features To Tackle Rising Competition

Posted by By Dan Taylor 3 Min Read

Baidu has announced its most significant update to its search engine in more than ten years, adding new artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities to better compete in a changing digital landscape.

As more users shift toward AI-powered chatbots for quick answers, Baidu is adapting its core product. The company now allows users to input queries with over 1,000 characters, compared to the previous 28-character limit. This aims to improve search accuracy and allow for more natural and detailed questions.

Users can now ask questions conversationally, similar to how they interact with AI tools like ChatGPT. Baidu is also enhancing voice and image-based search, offering more ways to interact with its platform.

The biggest update is the full integration of Baidu’s AI chatbot into the search engine. This move lets users generate text, images, and even video content directly within Baidu Search, combining traditional search with generative AI features.

According to a CNBC report, the upgrades are a direct response to user behavior changes. Kai Wang, a strategist at Morning Star, noted that Baidu is adjusting its strategy to reflect how users now interact with mainstream AI products.

Baidu has been facing increasing pressure from rivals like Tencent and DeepSeek, both of which are investing heavily in AI search tools. In addition, short video platforms are starting to use AI search features, taking more users away from Baidu.

Baidu’s early lead in AI began with the release of its Ernie Bot in 2023. The chatbot quickly gained traction with 100 million Chinese users in its first six months. Since then, the company has launched multiple AI products to maintain its momentum.

Despite these efforts, Baidu’s stock performance has lagged behind peers. Since the start of 2025, Baidu shares have risen just 2.5%. In comparison, Alibaba and Tencent stocks have grown 30.5% and 20%, respectively, during the same period.

With these latest upgrades, Baidu is hoping to regain ground in China’s increasingly competitive AI market and hold on to its position in the search space.

Dan Taylor
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Dan Taylor is the founder and editor of International Search Insights (ISI), the publication behind ReadIsi, and a Partner and Head of Innovation (Search & AI) at SALT.agency. He has worked in search for more than a decade, in-house and agency-side, and is regarded as one of the West’s leading voices on search engines beyond Google, including Yandex, Baidu, Naver and Cốc Cốc. On ReadIsi, Dan covers the engines and AI answer platforms that English-language coverage tends to miss: Baidu and ERNIE, Yandex and Alice AI, Naver, Cốc Cốc, Shenma, Sogou, WeChat and Weibo search, plus DeepSeek and Alibaba’s Qwen. He also keeps dated records of documented changes, such as the Yandex, Baidu and Naver algorithm update histories and the DeepSeek, ERNIE and Qwen model update histories. His approach is to take learnings from global search engines and apply logic with a high evidence threshold. A claim needs a source, patterns seen in one market are treated as a hypothesis until they are checked in another, and where the evidence is thin he says so. For brands, that means advice built on what can be shown, with measurement that separates being cited from being chosen. Dan is credited with coining the term “edge SEO” and won the inaugural TechSEO Boost research competition in 2018 for his work on CDN and edge changes for SEO. In 2026 he was credited with coining “Infinite Tail” to describe how keyword research is changing with AI search. He is the author of AI Search Marketing For The Travel Sector, writes for Search Engine Journal, Search Engine Land and Travel Marketing Guy, and has advised technology, SaaS, travel and enterprise ecommerce brands, including Cloudflare, GitLab and Airbnb. He has given multiple talks and panels at the International Search Summit in Barcelona, and has also spoken at Optimization Moscow, brightonSEO, Google Search Central Live Deep Dive Asia in Bangkok, Athens SEO and the Asia SEO Virtual Summit 2026, where his talk looked at how Baidu, Naver, DeepSeek, Tencent, Cốc Cốc and Yandex built their own AI answers.
Founder & Editor