Can AI Searches Like “Kimis” Replace Traditional Search Engines Like Baidu?

Posted by By Dan Taylor 3 Min Read

The rise of AI-powered search engines is reshaping how people find information online. Companies large and small are competing to dominate this space. Baidu, a long-time leader in search, is now facing challenges from both content platforms and AI-powered search solutions like Kimi.

Declining Popularity of Traditional Search

Baidu’s recent financial reports highlight a trend: the dominance of traditional search engines is waning. Baidu’s Q3 2024 revenue was 33.6 billion yuan, down 3% year-on-year. Its core advertising revenue also fell by 4%.

Statista data shows Baidu’s Chinese search market share dropped to 55.85% in May 2024, compared to 86.82% in 2021. Content platforms like Douyin and Xiaohongshu, along with vertical apps like Dianping, are eating into Baidu’s user base.

AI search engines further disrupt this space. Many users now prefer AI-based platforms for direct answers, citing fewer ads and more straightforward results. However, skeptics remain, pointing out occasional inaccuracies in AI-generated responses.

AI Search Gains Momentum

Baidu has integrated AI capabilities into its search platform. Its AI-powered assistant, Wenxin Yiyan (now rebranded as Wenxiaoyan), generates over 20% of search results and is used by 70% of its app’s active users.

Meanwhile, competitors are innovating rapidly. Companies like Douyin, Kuaishou, Alibaba, and Tencent are embedding AI-driven search features into their platforms. Startups such as Dark Side of the Moon, with its popular Kimi tool, are also gaining traction. Kimi simplifies tasks like report summaries and data searches, drawing millions of users monthly.

The Challenge of Monetization

Despite growing popularity, monetizing AI search remains a challenge. Subscription models and premium features are one approach, but user tolerance for errors decreases with paid services. For B2B solutions, advertising offers potential, but startups without established advertising ecosystems face stiff competition from giants like Baidu and Tencent.

Future Prospects

AI search engines are not yet comprehensive enough to fully replace traditional search engines, which serve as versatile tools for a wide range of needs. To succeed, AI platforms must improve content accuracy and reliability while developing sustainable monetization models.

Whether traditional and AI searches will coexist or one will dominate remains uncertain. What’s clear is that the search landscape is undergoing a profound transformation.

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