Taobao launched its own Hot Search List function in September. It's currently only available to 50% of the users, the Hot Search List appears when users click the search bar on the main page.
Hot Search items on the list appear to be phrases edited manually rather than product keywords. Though it looks like Weibo's Hot Search, the topics are not generated by keyword searches. For example, not many users will use the tag #BoXiaoYiJun# (name of a Chinese celebrity) to search for products, which more often appears on Weibo's Celebrity List.
For example, the topic #EatingAloneIsSoGood# once ranked the third on both Weibo and Taobao’s Hot Search Lists. And on both lists, the topic appeared to be "recommended", which means it was sponsored and appears on the list due to the system's active agenda settings.
Taobao was trying to promote small kitchen appliances to bachelors with the help of this topic. The appearance of this topic on Weibo can further boost the hype on social media ...
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