Number of words in this article: 4259 words Reading time: 15 minutes Internet and Mobile Internet Era In January 1995, the 64k dedicated lines established by the former Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications and the General Administration of Telecommunications in Beijing and Sh

Number of words in this book: 4259 words

Reading time: 15 minutes

Internet and Mobile Internet Era

In January 1995, the 64k dedicated lines established by the former Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications General Administration of Telecommunications in Beijing and Shanghai were opened, and Internet access services began to be provided to the society. China's Internet era Officially kicked off. html Over the past 130 years, from PC Internet to mobile Internet, from 2G to 4G and 5G, China's Internet industry has undergone earth-shaking changes. But throughout the history of the Internet, the Internet industry has always been helping people meet their needs with higher efficiency, whether it is obtaining information, obtaining goods/services, or establishing connections with people. If we go deep into the industry, we can observe some concepts and technologies that have had a key impact behind the changes in the industry, such as the development of search engines, the rise of web2.0, the popularity of recommendation algorithms, etc. The search scenarios, social scenarios and content scenarios shaped by technologies will be the entry point for us to understand traffic types in the Internet and mobile Internet era.

1

Search traffic

With the construction of Internet hardware facilities, more and more people are connected to the Internet. From 1997 to 2001, the number of Internet users soared from 630,000 to 22.5 million. Online content has also ushered in its first major explosion, and the amount of content has rapidly gone from scarcity to abundance to excess; the quality of content is also uneven, with both portals operating in a formal manner and personal websites run by one person and one computer. In this context, search engines emerged.

search engine

In 1997, Larry Page and Sergey Brin developed Google search engine based on PageRank technology. They are committed to organizing global information and making it accessible to everyone. Today, Google searches process more than 35 billion every day. search requests and remains the most visited website in the world. The rise of search engines stems from the excess of information brought about by the development of the Internet. Its value lies in improving the efficiency of obtaining high-quality information. Initially people could get a specific page by entering the website address into the browser, but as the number of websites and web pages increased, this became less practical. Users need an information aggregation point and filter, so solutions such as website navigation and search engines were born. The

search engine has become the traffic center in the PC Internet era, completely changing the traffic distribution logic of the Internet for the first time. People enter keywords in the search box to convey the purpose of their search, that is, the user's information needs. From the perspective of information theory, when the entered keywords are long enough and of high enough quality, the search engine can find the one that best matches the user's needs from billions or even hundreds of billions of web pages, and display it as the first one in the search results. .

The domestic search engine market also developed at a similar time and experienced ups and downs of competition. From 1997 to 1999, portal websites such as NetEase, , Sohu, , and Sina successively launched search engine services. Yahoo, , Google also entered the country or launched Chinese versions around 1999 and 2000. Baidu was established in January 2000 and officially landed on Nasdaq in 2005. At that time, its search market share exceeded 45%. After that, Tencent Soso, NetEase Youdao Search, Microsoft Bing, Pangu Search, Instant Search, 360 Search , etc. were launched one after another. Until the past two years, new players have entered the market, but they have not changed Baidu's leading position. According to data from market research organization StatCounter, Baidu's market share in the domestic search engine market in 2021 is 85.48%, far ahead of other competitors, and the search engine market pattern is relatively stable.

In the web era, search engines led by Google, Yahoo and Baidu account for about 70% of the traffic. Continuing into the mobile Internet era, users' search scenarios have shifted to mobile phones, and the number of mobile search users continues to grow.In December 2020, the number of mobile search engine users in China reached 768 million, of which the number of monthly active users of Baidu App reached 544 million, and the proportion of daily logged-in users exceeded 70%. In December 2021, Baidu App’s monthly active users increased to 622 million, and the proportion of daily logged-in users reached 82%.

Focusing on user needs, search engines can link diversified content, services and scenarios, spawning a series of business opportunities. Baidu has integrated a large number of individual webmasters through the Baidu Alliance, which not only enriches the results of its own search engines, but also brings traffic and advertising revenue to webmasters. In 2002, Baidu launched the MP3 function, and with the help of search traffic, it became the largest music listening portal in the PC era, once accounting for 1/3 of Baidu's traffic.

Baidu also continues to improve the knowledge category ecology around search needs, treating it as a moat for Baidu's search and information flow. It has launched six knowledge categories: Baidu Knows, Baidu Encyclopedia, Baidu Library, Baidu Experience, Baidu Academic, and Baby Knows. product. According to official data such as the 2019 Baidu Knowledge Summit, the content volume of Baidu Knowledge far exceeds 1 billion, the average daily searches reach 1.54 billion, and the daily service users exceed 230 million. Baidu has also launched smart speakers and smart assistants to seize the search entrance in home scenes and promote users' search methods to extend from text to voice and image, refreshing users' information acquisition experience. In December 2019, the number of voice interactions with Xiaodu Assistant exceeded 5 billion times.

In the era of smartphones, Apps have replaced web pages and become important content and information portals. According to data disclosed by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, as of the end of 2021, the number of apps on my country's domestic market reached 2.52 million, of which the number of local third-party app store apps reached 1.17 million, and the number of Apple Store (China) apps reached 1.35 million. Judging from the total amount of application distribution, the total number of applications distributed in the third-party application market reached 2,107.2 billion times, of which the download volume of game mobile applications reached 331.4 billion times, and the download volume of daily tools, music videos, social communication, life Downloads of services, news reading, system tools and e-commerce categories have all exceeded 100 billion times.

In this context, the App store, which carries App distribution capabilities, has become an important traffic entrance, and has driven the App store's search capabilities to become a resource that all parties strive for. The smartphone App store model was first launched by Apple on July 10, 2008. At that time, there were only about 500 apps, but it has had a significant impact on the way people use smartphones and even live. Apple's App store entered China in 2010, and Chinese smartphone manufacturers and third-party companies equipped with Android systems have since launched their own app markets. Baidu spent US$1.9 billion to acquire 91 Wireless in 2013 in an attempt to occupy the entrance to App distribution. It became the highest-priced acquisition in Chinese Internet history at that time. The battle for revenue sharing between game companies and mainstream Android app stores in 2020 is also a reflection of the battle between app store traffic value and content traffic value.

Search engines and shelf e-commerce

Not only has online information become richer, but people have also naturally begun to move offline physical product supply information online. From the launch of Taobao in 2003 and the launch of Jingdong Mall in June 2007, to the explosive development of platform-based e-commerce in 2009, more and more categories have been moved online, from books and electrical appliances to department stores, clothing, food, and even building materials. , home, automobile. Online transactions shorten the distance between goods and consumers, reduce the sales price of goods and enhance the competitiveness of goods by removing layers of channel links. In recent years, the fresh food e-commerce business that has been continuously entered by giants and startups can also be seen as a continuation of the trend of the supply side migrating from offline to online. In June 2021, Daily Youxian and Dingdong Maicai were listed on Nasdaq and New York Stock Exchange respectively, with market values ​​reaching 2.274 billion and 5.539 billion respectively. These newly listed companies on the fresh food track have passed The front-end warehouse model shortens the delivery time of fresh food and provides a new solution for the fresh food e-commerce industry. Promoted by factors such as the epidemic, online retail accounted for 35% of overall consumption in November 2021 (excluding automobile consumption). It can be seen that e-commerce has greatly changed the way people meet consumer needs

With online Product information has become abundant, and consumers also need convenient and efficient ways to find the products they want. E-commerce platforms have thus become an aggregator and filter of product information. Under the logic of "people looking for goods" in shelf e-commerce, most users have relatively clear shopping goals, that is, they know what problems they want to solve or what products they want to buy, which means that users can search for products through keywords. Therefore, similar to general-purpose search engines, search engines within e-commerce platforms can also identify consumers' intentions based on users' search terms and present the products consumers need at a higher position. In addition, e-commerce platforms can also combine users’ past purchasing behavior information to better predict consumer needs, further improve the accuracy of person-product matching, and continuously optimize search capabilities and search experience (such as adding richer filtering conditions). etc.) to improve the conversion rate of consumers within the platform.

From the above analysis, we can see that the search engine of shelf e-commerce mainly solves the problem of converting traffic, but does not solve the problem of attracting traffic, that is, how to stimulate users' shopping needs . The problem of obtaining shelf e-commerce traffic is the key issue of competition between platforms and intra-platform operations in the e-commerce industry. In order to obtain traffic for internal distribution within the platform, Taobao, Tmall, JD.com and other platforms will organize a large number of promotional activities on the site (such as Double Eleven and 618, which are now universally participated), and place a large number of advertisements offline and on other platforms. Alibaba blocks off-site search engines and continues to invest in and acquire various traffic platforms. The Alimama business uses the power of ecological partners (such as Taobao) to attract traffic to the platform. Behind this is the shelf e-commerce solution to traffic, and Social e-commerce and content e-commerce mentioned below can be seen as new solutions to solve the problem of traffic acquisition.

Search engine marketing

The main form of advertising in the portal era is display advertising. Most display ads have nothing to do with readers' intentions and cannot really attract readers' attention. Therefore, such ads are usually not effective and cannot bring in valuable customers. In search scenarios, the effectiveness of advertising has been greatly improved compared to display advertising. The user's input in the search box provides information about their intentions, and the search engine company can easily determine which advertisement or advertisements are highly matched to the user's needs, thereby achieving precise delivery.

Companies represented by Google have launched a pay-per-click online advertising format. Companies can obtain search engine traffic through payment, placement, keyword purchase, and location purchase. Since then, payment based on performance and evaluation have become the mainstream marketing and advertising models. Qianzhan Industry Research Institute summarizes the advantages of search engine advertising into four aspects: extremely targeted, trackable advertising effects, broad audience and flexible budget.

Search engine marketing (SEM) corresponds to bidding ranking in search results: brands select keywords and design promotion copy, and pay promotion fees to obtain higher positions in the search results for these keywords. If the user clicks, the brand can complete the traffic through the landing page. Brands can improve the efficiency of traffic acquisition by optimizing word selection, copywriting creativity, landing page design and opening efficiency.

’s free way to acquire customers is search engine optimization (SEO). Enterprises study the ranking algorithm of search engine natural results (the part other than paid results), and then adjust their own pages to adapt to the ranking algorithm, so that their websites can appear a higher position in the sorting. For example, when a search engine uses the number of links to a website from external websites as an evaluation factor of website quality, the company's website will be linked to other websites for reference exchanges, and when the number of clicks has a higher weight in the search ranking, the company's website will be linked to other websites. Websites use machine clicks to get higher rankings.

related marketing technologies and marketing methods have also been extended to e-commerce search advertising. For example, Alimama has launched a through-train promotion function. When the keywords purchased by the merchant match the keywords searched by the buyer, the merchant's products will have the opportunity to be displayed.

In order to optimize the conversion effect, Alimama provides different user characteristics dimensions to help merchants select more accurate target groups. Merchants can choose specific groups of people based on dimensions such as style, life stage, purchasing power, and interest preferences. They can also choose groups of people who have generated specific store behaviors such as browsing, browsing peer stores, and purchasing. They can also choose groups based on unit price, gender, etc. , age, average monthly consumption, weather and other factors to independently select designated groups. In order to further lower the threshold, Alimama also launched an intelligent promotion function that uses algorithms to assist merchants in automatically matching search traffic. In order to obtain search traffic, merchants will also work hard to break the search ranking rules of e-commerce platforms. For example, we can see that many merchants will add a large number of keywords to product names and introductions to increase the probability of hitting user search terms. For another example, some merchants will adopt the method of brushing orders to increase the sales volume and rating information of the store, so as to obtain a high position in the search result rankings.

Source: Alimama’s official website

Taobao system

In addition to directly selling search advertising space, Alimama also designed rules for replacing search weights with external traffic and Taobao’s system, thereby achieving the goal of introducing external traffic into Taobao. Taobao customers obtain product codes from Taobao Alliance and place them where they want to promote. After buyers enter the seller's store through the promotion link and complete the purchase, Taobao customers can get commissions paid by the seller. Taobao sellers obtain store transactions through this method, which improves the credibility, sales volume and evaluation of the store. This makes their products more likely to appear at the top of the search results for related keywords and obtains free traffic within the Taobao site. And are eligible to sign up for other Taobao activities.