Both home-grown and overseas Internet portals have hired agencies to promote their search-engine services, which they hope can become a new profit engine.

Lycos Asia (China) Limited, a joint venture between Terra Lycos Inc and Singapore Telecommunication, said Monday it has hired HowV Network Tech Co Ltd as the exclusive distributor of its search products in the Chinese mainland.

The Xiamen-based HowV Network also has distribution agreements with several other major portals, including Sina.com and Sohu.com.

NetEase.com Inc has authorized Shanghai Hotsales Software Technology Co Ltd last month as its exclusive distributor to promote its search engine services targeting small- and medium-sized companies in Shanghai.

It plans to grab 40 percent of the search engine advertisement market in Shanghai this year. Lycos didn't release any share objective or sales figure for the first year of the deal.

"We hope to lay solid groundwork by cooperating with HowV Network," said Long Yi, a Lycos operations manager.

While half of its domestic revenue comes from wireless services, it doesn't want to be late for the search engine advertisement market.

"When the wireless value-added services such as SMS slow down, all the Website operators will be looking for something new," said Zou Lei, a research manager with iResearch Co, an information technology consulting company.

"The search engine market is becoming integrated and mature. More cooperation between local Website operators and the distribution channels will occur in the future to prepare for competition from the international rivals," Zou added.

Google Inc, another popular online search engine, made efforts to tap the Chinese market earlier this year as it launched a service enabling domestic companies to put online advertisements on the Website.

The Chinese search-result advertisement market reached 480 million yuan (US$57.83 million) last year and is expected to hit 780 million yuan this year, according to iResearch.

The fast growing search engine market actually spurred the founding of the Shanghai-based iResearch itself.

"It seems to be the only industry information collector so far," said Bi Sheng, a spokesman with Baidu.com (Beijing) Co Ltd, which is the major domestic search engine provider firm.

(eastday.com April 6, 2004)