Qihoo 360 launched its new search brand “Haosou” this week. Haosou.com is online now and its previous search engine domain so.com is now redirecting traffic to haosou.com.
360 changed its search engine brand name and its logo trying to help users easily remember and understand. One insider believed that Haosou is more applicable in mobile internet market and Haosou could be sub-brand of Qihoo 360 which can make it an independent search brand.
Qi Xiangdong also said that Haosou.com can provide more opportunities for 360 search business, which made 360 search business adapt to mobile internet’s development.
According to China Mobile gateway traffic data recently leaked on Weibo, Shen Ma Search (m.sm.cn) was the second largest mobile search engine in June after Baidu. 360 Search had a target of gaining a market share of 35% by the end of 2014, which seemed achievable if the CNZZ data is solid.
Search engines’ revenue from mobile search was the key driving force for China search engine market in Q3 2014. The revenue from mobile search increased RMB5.53 billion ($0.9 billion) representing 59.9% of total growth from same period of prior year.
“Sou” in Chinese means search while “Hao” means good; Haosou brand’s own explanation is that, it’s a good search engine and does not do bad things seeming to insinuate scams that the leading search engine Baidu faced in the past year.
Qihoo 360 Technology has launched its own ad network in July 2014 which at the moment is more an affiliate network for its own products as it pays when a conversion is counted.