Yahoo China announced on January 31 that it is expected to launch an upgrading service of its current "network real name" search in February. The service features a function whereby users merely input the company name, keyword or product into the address field to get to the company webpage rather than the company's URL. In addition to this, Yahoo China will integrate the websites under the umbrella of Alibaba to increase the network real name flow. The general director of the Network Real Name Sales Department of Yahoo China Shen Yongtao said that this initiative will strengthen the role of the network real name marketing tool in the search field.

Shen said that the network real name service itself has the feature of search, but is still incomplete in its functions and applications. Therefore, Yahoo China will launch an upgrading to strengthen its reliability and efficiency. In addition to this, Yahoo China will change the network resources under Alibaba to increase additional entrances for network real name users. "For customers, the increase in traffic is the core value. The network real name service will continue to be used with fixed fees as its sales model, rather than with competitive rankings," he said.

According to surveys by Yahoo China, currently, domestic high-end users mainly deal with branded advertising and middle-end users with advertising of competitive rankings. However, for most of the low-end users, the fixed-fee sales model of network real name is more suitable with lower costs.

In regards to the controversial network real name plug-ins, Shen said that Yahoo has no longer adopted the promotion model of compulsory installation and the network real name business will not only include plug-ins in the future. In fact, Microsoft's IE7 has access to Chinese websites, thus, there is no need to achieve that function by search plug-ins of Chinese websites, such as the network real name service. The operational parameters of network real name plug-ins have already been narrowed.

Zhou Hongwei, chairman of Qihoo, a leading domestic Internet technology company, has previously stated that along with the ending of the cooperation between Microsoft and China Telecom, the market share of the network real name service has greatly dropped. Shen Yongtao, however, has stated that Yahoo China will not abandon the network real name service, as the service has been undergoing a steady growth in the past two years. But he was unwilling to disclose the market share of the network real name service in the field of address column search.

Sources say that the new version of the network real name technology has been basically completed and will be put into trial in mid February and officially launched in early March.