How do Chinese buyers search for foreign services?

Most advice on this topic reduces China to Baidu plus social media. The measured picture is more interesting, and so are the gaps in it.

We found no study of how Chinese buyers look for foreign services. So this guide separates what’s measured from what’s only claimed, then gives you a test to run on your own service.

It’s part of our guide on how to find Chinese customers.

Where do Chinese buyers search now?

Across several apps, and mostly on a phone. CNNIC counted 782.06 million search engine users in December 2025, down from 877.82 million a year earlier. And 99.6% of Chinese internet users go online by phone, while 32.5% use a desktop computer.¹

Those 782.06 million are still 69.5% of internet users, so search hasn’t gone away.¹ It now shares the job with AI tools and social apps.

CNNIC says AI search products are affecting traditional engine user numbers, without saying by how much.¹

Place	Latest figure	Reported by	Read with care
Search engines	782.06M users, Dec. 2025	CNNIC 1	Official, but says nothing about purchases
Baidu app	644M monthly users, June 2026	Baidu 23	Company figure, one app
Generative AI	602M users, Dec. 2025	CNNIC 1	76.0% use it to answer questions, not only to shop
AI-native apps	499M monthly users, May 2026	QuestMobile via IT Home 8	Third-party panel
Xiaohongshu	800M searches a day, May 2026	Company report, via Beijing Business Today 24	Company claim. Jing Daily gave nearly 600M for Q4 2024, naming no source 11
Douyin	7 searches per user per day, 2024	Its ad platform, via Jiemian 10	The seller of search ads
WeChat search	800M monthly users, 2022	WeChat’s search lead 12	Old, no newer figure found

So do Chinese people still use Baidu, or have they moved to DeepSeek and Doubao? Both, on these numbers.

IT Home’s report of QuestMobile data puts Doubao at 382 million monthly users, Qwen at 167 million and DeepSeek at 130 million, apparently for May 2026.⁸ Those panel figures aren’t comparable with Baidu’s own count.

Xiaohongshu said in 2024 that 70% of its users actively search, at an average of 6 searches a day.⁹ It’s a company figure, but it helps explain why agencies treat the app as a search engine.

Our guide to Xiaohongshu for foreign businesses goes further.

Is Baidu still where buyers start?

Nobody has measured it, as far as we could find. The sources that sound certain don’t agree.

Marketing to China says Baidu is “still the first place a Chinese professional looks for a supplier.”

The same article says the first shortlist in 2026 often comes from an AI assistant inside WeChat. It cites no buyer survey for either.¹³

Nielsen Norman Group ran a small study, with 6 participants, published in May 2026. Very few used search engines, even for simple facts.

Five of the 6 complained about ads on Baidu.² That’s a useful signal, not a market share.

StatCounter adds a detail that’s easy to miss.

In October 2026, Baidu led on mobile at 60.37%, while Bing led on desktop at 46.01%, ahead of Baidu at 29.65%.⁶⁷ It counts clicks through to websites, not searches, and the shares move from month to month.⁵

Baidu’s page has also changed. It said roughly 70% of its mobile result pages contained AI-generated content in October 2025.³ CNNIC describes a new result page that gives AI summary answers.¹

So reaching Baidu may now mean being read by an AI answer, not only being clicked.

See Baidu AI answers and foreign websites and Baidu’s market share in context.

How do buyers move between apps?

The sources we read describe roughly four steps: discover, ask, check elsewhere, then make contact. The order varies, and it’s a description rather than a measurement.

1. Discover

   Video, posts, a friend

2. Ask or search

   AI assistant, Baidu, Xiaohongshu

3. Check on other apps

   Real users' posts, reviews

4. Contact

   WeChat, form, call

The third step is where China may look different.

In the NN/g article, North American participants mostly cross-checked AI answers on search engines, while its 6 Chinese participants turned to social apps such as Rednote, Douyin and Bilibili.²

One person’s trip plan ran through Douyin, Baidu, DeepSeek and Rednote on a single phone.²

Three sources describe the stages. Here they are side by side, since none alone is strong.

Stage	Sinorbis, B2B, 2021 14	Marketing to China, B2B, 2026 13	iClick, study abroad, 2026 15
Discover	Organic search, WeChat, Zhihu	Baidu or an AI assistant	Lifestyle and food content on Xiaohongshu
Compare	Search, paid search, Zhihu, WeChat, site chat	Reads and asks around, checks Baidu, WeChat and what others say	Cost, safety, whether employers recognize the degree
Decide	Search, email, WeChat, video calls	Personal WeChat contact, trade fairs to meet in person	University, agency and application steps

The two B2B columns are agency views, without surveys. iClick’s comes from social listening on 118 Xiaohongshu creators, so it shows what’s published more than what buyers do.¹⁵

Still, study abroad is the closest case to a foreign service that we found.

iClick’s summary is worth keeping: “Chinese students process study abroad decisions through a lifestyle lens first, an academic lens second.”¹⁵

Which channel to work on first is a separate decision. See Baidu, WeChat or Xiaohongshu: which channel first?

What do Chinese buyers actually type?

The published examples are Chinese phrases that state a need, not short keyword strings. That’s a handful of examples, not a measurement, but it’s a reason to doubt a word-for-word translated keyword list.

Language changes the page itself. An audit of 500 queries found AI overviews on 82.0% of Chinese Baidu queries and only 4.0% of the same queries in English.⁴

It ran from Milan in June and July 2026, using English queries from a Bing dataset translated by machine. The authors warn that Baidu from Milan may not match Baidu from the mainland.⁴

Query shape	Example from the sources	Where
Whole need in one line	“travel destinations with nice views and fewer people” 9	Xiaohongshu
How-to	How to apply for a visa: 10.22M people, first half of 2024 10	Xiaohongshu
Which is best	哪款防晒霜最好用, “which sunscreen works best” 20	Xiaohongshu
Short planning term	留学规划, “study abroad planning” 15	Xiaohongshu hashtag
Planning task	Draft a trip itinerary, estimate days and budget 2	DeepSeek

Only the visa and study examples touch a foreign service. The others show the form, not your market.

EC Innovations, a translation vendor, says an English word can have 3 to 20 Chinese translations, each with its own search volume.¹⁶

It adds that people search one topic several times from different angles.¹⁶ That’s a vendor’s claim, not a measurement.

Buyers may also start from a need more often than from a name.

An OMD China study reported in 2018 found only 19% of search activity was for brands or products.¹⁹ It tracked 150 searchers and surveyed 750 on cars, travel and skincare, and it’s old, so treat it as a hint.

We found no data on how often buyers type a foreign brand in Latin letters or in Chinese. Check both, and read how to choose a Chinese brand name.

For tools and volumes, use our guide to Baidu keyword research.

Free check

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Enter your website. We check Baidu, access from China and how your site is set up, then email you the report.

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Does the path change with the buyer?

It appears to, but the evidence is very uneven. It’s strongest for consumers on lifestyle topics and weakest for the buyers many foreign firms want.

Buyer	What’s known	What’s missing
Consumers	Platform data on search use 910	Independent measurement
Wealthy individuals	Hurun, 470 people: Xiaohongshu 61%, Douyin 48%, WeChat 32% as information sources 22	Anything specific to services. It’s a luxury survey
Students and parents	Topics and stages from creators 15	What families do offline
Company buyers	Agency descriptions only 1314	Any survey we could find
Chinese living abroad	Nothing we could find on which engine or app they use	Almost everything

If you sell to companies, read B2B marketing in China.

For Chinese communities outside China, start with how to reach Chinese people living abroad and mainland or diaspora.

How can you test this on your own service?

Run the same need through each platform and write down what appears. You’ll need a native speaker. It’s a small sample, but it’s about your service, which no general survey is.

1. Collect the phrasing. Ask a native speaker how they’d ask a friend for your service. Note five ways of saying it.
2. Check Baidu’s suggestions. Type each phrase into Baidu, and keep the wording that autocomplete offers.
3. Read the results page. Note what fills it: an AI answer, ads, Baidu’s own sites, agencies, foreign companies.
4. Ask two AI assistants. Put the same need to Doubao and DeepSeek. Record which companies and sources they name.
5. Search the social apps. Try Xiaohongshu and WeChat. Note who posts, and how recent it is.
6. Search your own name. Try it in Latin letters, and in Chinese if you have a name. Note what a cautious buyer would find.

Then read what you found. These are starting points, not rules.

What you see	Likely reading	Next step
AI answers and Baidu’s own sites	Your website alone may not be visible	Baidu Baike and Tieba, AI answers
Mostly real users’ posts	Peers shape the choice	Xiaohongshu
Company sites, including foreign ones	Search can reach this buyer	Our guide to Baidu
WeChat articles lead	Content lives inside the app	WeChat search
Almost nothing	Weak demand, or the wrong words	Retry the phrasing before you conclude

Your name search feeds a different question: how to earn the trust of Chinese buyers.

The bottom line

If you keep one thing, keep this: Chinese buyers don’t have one search habit. They move between engines, AI and social apps, and published data shows the platforms better than it shows the buyers.

So treat confident claims with care. A test on your own service, in real Chinese, is a small sample, but it’s the only evidence here about your market.

How Index in China can help

We translate your website into Simplified Chinese with a human reviewer, work on getting it indexed on Chinese search engines and send a monthly report on Chinese traffic.

That covers the search side of this path, not every app in it. See what we do, or book a 30-minute call.

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