Baidu and Google have become the two major companies dominating China's online searching market with 90 percent of the market share in combination.

A report released by iResearch said that the most frequently used searching website in China is Baidu.com, which accounts for 56.6 percent of the total market.

Google.com ranks the second with the market share of 32.8 percent. The two web-sites in combination account for nearly 90 percent of China's online searching market.

Yahoo and its related searching websites only have a market share of less than 5 percent, said iResearch.

The report said that Baidu ranked the second in the market three years ago, but its market share rose sharply to No.1 in the following year.

As China's largest searching website, Baidu is still in the momentum of expansion, said iResearch.

Google, the world's searching engine giant, ranked the No.1 in China's market with the market share being 34.8 percent in 2003. But later its share dropped due to license restriction in China.

Last year, due to its global influence and its promotion following the Shanghai agency's launching, Google has gained back a little.

According to the iResearch report, China's searching users reached 97.06 million last year, accounting for 87.4 percent of all the netizens in the country.

The research institution predicted that the number will rise to above 100 million this year which will be 88.1 percent of the netizens.

(Xinhua News Agency April 4, 2006)