What is the Shenma search engine, and does it matter for your site?

Shenma appears on nearly every list of Chinese search engines, usually with a market share that’s years out of date.

If you’re deciding where to spend, you need the current number and what it leaves out.

This guide covers one engine. For the full picture, see Which Chinese search engines should a foreign company target?

What is Shenma?

Shenma is a mobile search engine launched at sm.cn on April 28, 2014, by a joint venture of UCWeb and Alibaba.⁵

Alibaba bought all of UCWeb weeks later, and mobile search moved into its UC business group.⁶

You’ll see both 2013 and 2014 as its start date. The venture was formed in July 2013, and the search engine launched in April 2014.⁵

Question	What we found
Operator named on the site	Guangzhou Shenma Mobile Information Technology Co., Ltd. 8
Focus at launch	Web search, plus apps, shopping and fiction 5
Distribution	Replaced Baidu as UC’s mobile default in 2014.7 SEJ still called it the default in 2024 16
Devices	Mobile. No desktop search bar in a 2019 check 15
Webmaster tool	Shenma Webmaster Platform, at zhanzhang.sm.cn 9
Crawler	Directories disagree: Botcrawl says YisouSpider is Shenma’s, Known Agents says it’s Yisou’s.2726 The Shenma terms name no crawler 9

We couldn’t confirm the UC default for 2026, so don’t plan around it.

Is Shenma still running?

Yes, as far as we can see from outside China. On November 1, 2026, m.sm.cn and the webmaster platform both responded.⁸⁹

The signs are mixed. The homepage footer stops its copyright at 2020, yet it lists permit numbers that carry 2023 and 2024.⁸ The webmaster terms date from August 2020.⁹

How much of China’s search does Shenma have?

Very little in the data we have. StatCounter measured 0.21% of China’s search clicks in October 2026, and 0.33% on mobile.¹²

Over the 12 months to October 2026, its share ranged from 0.13% to 0.54%, with a simple average of 0.24%.¹ It stood at 2.88% in January 2024.¹

By our division, Baidu’s 49.00% was about 230 times Shenma’s share in October 2026.¹ Even 360 Search at 8.67% and Sogou at 1.72% sit well above it.¹

So read 0.21% as a rough signal, not as a count of Shenma’s users. It’s still the only current figure we found.

You won’t see Shenma on StatCounter’s default chart. The figures here come from its CSV download. Our page on search engine market share in China explains the method.

Why do other guides give such different numbers?

Most of them quote old figures, leave out the date or mix mobile with all devices. Here’s where the common ones come from.

Figure	Where you’ll see it	What it actually is
20%	TechNode, 2014	UCWeb’s CEO on mobile “penetration”, method unknown 7
8.78%	China Internet Watch, Wikipedia (8.8%)	Labeled April 2017. StatCounter’s export shows 8.78% for March 2017 and 9.80% for April 22231
About 15%	Nanjing Marketing Group, 2018	StatCounter, December 2017: 15.16% in the export, after 3.38% in November. The author thought it high 191
5% to 15%	Dragon Metrics, 2019	Estimates, with a note that reliable data is hard to find 15
1.74%	SEJ 2024, Relevant Audience 2022, Elite Asia 2026	No source from the first two, and Elite Asia cites SEJ.162130 Same value as StatCounter’s mobile reading for December 2021 2
3.04%	Chinafy, 2024	Statista, February 2024 18
2.88%	Sinorbis, 2025	No date given. Same value as StatCounter’s January 2024 figure 171
80% of mobile users	Chinafy, 2024	Credited to OctoPlus Media. Not a market share 18
0.21%	StatCounter	All devices, October 2026 1

Shenma’s monthly figures also swing hard, so the month someone picks changes the story. In StatCounter’s all-device export it went from 3.38% in November 2017 to 28.76% in February 2018, then 9.35% in April 2018.¹

The Egg’s yearly mobile table shows the same trap. Its 2019 to 2023 values match StatCounter’s December readings, so each is one month, not a year. Its 2024 value of 2.77% doesn’t match the 3.28% in the export, and it has no 2025 value.²⁰²

1. 201910.87%
2. 20202.79%
3. 20211.74%
4. 20226.46%
5. 20233.72%
6. 20243.28%
7. 20250.89%
8. Oct. 20260.33%

StatCounter export, December readings

December 2022’s 6.46% sat between 3.62% in November and 3.73% in January.² That looks more like noise in the sample than a change in habits, though that’s our reading, not a measured fact.

Don’t build a plan on any single month. The direction since 2024 is clearer than any one reading.

Is Shenma the same as Quark?

We can’t say that they are. Quark is a separate Alibaba-backed product that shares a company with UC Browser, according to a 2020 analysis.¹⁴ Some clues point to a link, but none settles it.

• A shared origin. A 2020 piece on The Paper’s contributor platform traced both to UC and Alibaba.²⁹
• A shared host. quark.sm.cn showed a search page with an SM.CN footer and a variant of Shenma’s ICP number.¹¹⁸
• Blocked from crawlers. The robots.txt on that host disallows everything.¹²
• Shared paths. The robots.txt on m.sm.cn lists paths such as /quarkai/ and /kuakesousuo/.¹⁰
• A different operator. quark.cn names Guangzhou Dongyue Information Technology and doesn’t mention Shenma.¹³

These clues suggest shared technical roots. They don’t show that Quark’s results come from Shenma’s index, or that being in one means being in the other.

It matters because Quark has a large audience. Beijing News said in July 2026 that Quark held at the 200 million level, in a piece on AI apps built on a ranking made with Xsignal.²⁵ Nearby figures are monthly actives, but the article doesn’t label Quark’s.

Don’t add that to Shenma, and don’t set it beside a click share, because they measure different things. For AI apps, including one vendor test of Qwen via Quark, see DeepSeek, Doubao and AI answers.

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What does Shenma rank on?

We found no official list of ranking factors. Its terms say ranking is mainly automated, and that it crawls and indexes “according to certain rules” (our translation).⁹

The claim you’ll read most is that Taobao and Tmall listings get priority.¹⁶¹⁸ Neither guide offers evidence.

A 2019 test by The World of Chinese did find Taobao ads in results, not clearly labeled as ads.²⁴

If you sell services rather than goods on Alibaba’s marketplaces, we found nothing that tells you what helps. Be wary of any Shenma SEO checklist that doesn’t say where it comes from.

What does a Shenma webmaster account involve?

A real-name account, with terms that few guides mention. The platform lists Sitemap submission, structured data, mobile adaptation and traffic analysis.⁹ We read the terms, effective August 2020.

Clause	What it says 9	Why it matters
1.1, 2.3	Open to people and organizations, under real-name registration	It doesn’t say which foreign documents pass
2.6	Content you publish on your account can sync to Alibaba platforms	Read this before you publish there
2.11	180 days with nothing published can lead to cancellation	A set-and-forget account may not last
3.3, 3.4	No guarantee on search, and crawling follows set rules	Submitting promises nothing
4.2(22)	Bars content in languages other than the site’s common ones	Its effect on foreign content is unclear
5.1	The operator may change or end the service	Don’t build a process on it
9.2	Negotiation first, then either side can sue at the Guangzhou Internet Court	A lawsuit would be heard in China

What should you do about Shenma?

Nanjing Marketing Group wrote in 2018 that there was “no reason to not be on Shenma”.¹⁹ That made more sense when it quoted a share near 15%.

Today the question is whether it’s worth any of your time, and these checks take very little.

1. Make your mobile pages work. Shenma’s roots are mobile, so start with Baidu mobile SEO and test your site from China.
2. Keep crawlers in. Check that your robots.txt and firewall don’t block YisouSpider, including through a rule aimed at all bots.
3. Search your server logs. Look for YisouSpider. It’s a clue, not proof, since the name can be faked and directories disagree on who runs it.²⁶²⁷
4. Look for sm.cn referrers. StatCounter records Shenma under the host so.m.sm.cn.²⁸ Use your server logs or a tool that works in China, because Google Analytics is unreliable there.
5. Read the result. The table below tells you what each outcome means.

What you see	What to do
No YisouSpider at all	Check for a block, remove it, then leave it
YisouSpider, no sm.cn visits	Nothing. Spend the time on Baidu and Bing
sm.cn visits that become enquiries	Consider an account, after reading the terms

Some visits from apps may arrive with no referrer, so a blank result isn’t proof of zero. It’s still enough to decide, because it means Shenma isn’t a channel you can measure or manage.

The bottom line

If you remember one thing, make it this: Shenma’s 0.21% may understate its real use, but nothing we found shows a foreign company needs separate work for it.

Keep it open to crawlers and watch your referrers. Spend the budget on Baidu and Bing until your own data says otherwise.

How Index in China can help

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