ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok, has rolled out a new standalone application in China designed specifically for searching short video content on Douyin. This move signals ByteDance’s increasing ambition to rival the internet search giant Baidu, firmly placing it in the competitive search engine arena.
Named Douyin Search, this app capitalizes on the widespread popularity of Douyin, the Chinese equivalent of TikTok. It became available for download on various domestic Android app stores this week, although as of Thursday, it was not yet listed on Apple’s App Store.
The user interface of Douyin Search features a search bar prominently at the top of the homepage, followed by a selection of trending topics. On Thursday afternoon, the trends highlighted included “the battle scenes of Black Myth: Wukong,” a popular Chinese video game launched this week, and “Eric Tsang Chi-wai achieved 100 million sales in three hours of live commerce,” referencing the Hong Kong actor’s successful live-streamed shopping event on Douyin the previous day.
Developed by Beijing Douyin Technology, the app brands itself as “real and reliable,” offering “strong search and accurate recommendations” derived from Douyin’s short video platform. This is powered by ByteDance’s advanced artificial intelligence-based recommendation algorithm, aiming to provide a robust user experience.
Below the search bar, users will find two columns of curated short videos. Another tab in the app presents a layout very similar to the homepage of Douyin or TikTok, enabling users to swipe through videos seamlessly.
This initiative marks ByteDance’s fifth attempt at crafting a search app, following previous endeavors such as Toutiao Search, Toutiao Search Lite, Wukong Search, and Shandian Search. Among these, only Toutiao Search Lite remains available for download from major app stores. The primary Toutiao Search app has been rebranded into the content community platform Youshi, and Wukong Search has evolved into an AI assistant.
Douyin Search is the latest example in a series of strategies by tech giants to exploit their existing dominance in specific sectors to challenge Baidu’s supremacy in search. In 2021, Tencent Holdings acquired the well-known search tool Sogou, only to shutter its mobile app a year later following their expansion of WeChat’s search capabilities in 2019. Similarly, Alibaba Group Holding, the owner of the South China Morning Post, introduced its Quark search engine back in 2016.
Despite these aggressive moves from rivals, Baidu has managed to retain a firm grip on the Chinese internet search market, holding a 52 percent market share as of July, according to data from StatCounter, a web traffic analytics company. Following Baidu were Microsoft’s Bing with 32 percent, 360 Search at 7 percent, and Sogou at 4 percent.
As competition in the search engine domain heats up, ByteDance’s introduction of Douyin Search could signify a pivotal shift in user search behaviors, utilizing short video content to redefine the parameters of online search.