Tencent now runs two search brands, Sogou and Yuanbao Search, and is testing whether WeChat content and restrained advertising can draw new users to web search.
Tencent has put a standalone search engine in front of consumers. Yuanbao Search, reachable at so.qq.com from any browser or by switching engines in the latest QQ Browser, went live on November 11, IT Home reported. The service runs on the large-model capabilities behind Tencent’s Yuanbao assistant and searches a hundred-billion-scale index that covers the open web, WeChat official accounts, WeChat Channels videos and academic literature. IT Home attributed the announcement to Tencent Cloud.
The consumer site follows a business launch three weeks earlier. On October 20, Tencent Cloud began selling Yuanbao Search to developers, with three service tiers priced from RMB14 per 1,000 calls, IT Home reported at the time. Tencent Cloud said in October that Yuanbao Search already handled hundreds of millions of calls a day for more than 50 Tencent businesses. Tencent has given no user figures for the new site.
The most distinctive promise concerns advertising. Tencent says ads are separated from answers and can be collapsed as a whole block with a "收起广告" (hide ads) control. Quoted by Sina Tech, the product’s web lead described the launch as Tencent entering web search "as a challenger" to fix problems users have long complained about.
Tencent builds its pitch on official sources and WeChat content
According to Tencent’s description, as reported by IT Home, the company rebuilt the whole search chain on the Yuanbao model, from understanding a query through retrieval and ranking to organizing the answer. Results give priority to authoritative institutions and official sources, and the engine connects to 157 authoritative sources. Sina Tech reported that every result shows where it came from and that official websites carry a label.
The content Tencent controls is the clearest difference from rivals. Sina Tech said the engine pulls in WeChat official accounts, WeChat Channels and Tencent News, so that a search on a trending event can surface clusters of related WeChat articles and Channels videos. For academic material, IT Home reported that the engine explains paper conclusions in plain language while keeping the original text as evidence, and offers one-click English-to-Chinese translation. Sina Tech described a separate academic channel that, for health and medical questions, summarizes the professional literature and links back to the original sources.
Beijing Business Today reported that users can search by typing, speaking or taking a photo, and that answers appear as cards and charts where useful. Tencent also says the product uses a "recursive self-evolution" (RSI) mechanism to find problems in real use and feedback and improve the search experience. An AI mode, per Sina Tech, lets users ask follow-up questions with context carried over.
A second search brand now sits beside Sogou
Tencent already owns Sogou, and the new engine does not replace it. Li Ruizhang, who leads the Yuanbao Search web product, told Sina Tech that the two serve different purposes: Sogou will keep serving users with long-standing habits, while Yuanbao Search is meant to attract new ones. He said Tencent had spent a long time asking what web search should become once AI arrived and "finally had an answer this year." He also said the team would keep adding AI features but would not turn the product into an AI chat assistant, and that scale was not its first concern for now, ahead of user feedback and word of mouth.
On money, Li said the team does not want to avoid commercial relationships entirely. "We don’t reject advertising, but users shouldn’t have to look for answers in ads," he said, according to IT Home’s follow-up report. He described the approach as restraint, with ads clearly marked.
The consumer launch had been anticipated. TechNode, citing a Huxiu report, wrote on November 4 that the search team was formed alongside Yuanbao in mid-2024, draws on technology from QQ Browser and Sogou, and shares its underlying capabilities with the Yuanbao app and the cloud API. The so.qq.com homepage now describes the service as Tencent’s next-generation AI search.
The cloud business and ad policy will show how far Tencent pushes
The October developer offering gives the clearest view of the engine’s reach. IT Home reported then that it connects 157 sources across 13 industries, including finance, healthcare, law and travel, and serves Tencent products such as WorkBuddy, ima and Tencent Video. A consumer site gives that same engine a public test.
Yuanbao itself remains in flux. EastFrontier reported in October that Tencent was considering a personal AI agent for Yuanbao, and the search product now adds a second consumer face to the brand.
The concrete signals to watch are the first paid placements on so.qq.com and how far they stay inside the collapsible ad block, and whether Tencent publishes user numbers for the site or shifts QQ Browser users from Sogou to the new engine.