Naver's search market share tops 80% after AI search boost

[Financial News] Naver has expanded its influence in South Korea's search market, briefly pushing its market share above 80% after strengthening its AI search services.
According to industry sources on the 21st, Naver's search market share has been on the rise since the launch of its AI search service, AI Tab. Data from market researcher Internet Trend showed that Naver's average search market share was 63.82% from Jan. 1 to April 26, before the beta launch of AI Tab. It then rose to 66.34% from April 27 to June 17, after the launch, an increase of about 2.5 percentage points.
In particular, the share climbed as high as 81.34% on May 24. Over the roughly six weeks since AI Tab launched, there were 14 days when Naver's search market share exceeded 70%.
Industry observers say the rise in Naver's search market share has been driven by AI Tab. AI Tab is a conversational search service that combines generative AI with Naver's search infrastructure. Users can explore information through back-and-forth questions and answers, and the service is also linked with Naver's shopping, place, and other offerings.
User response has also been positive. After launching beta service for Naver Plus Membership users, AI Tab surpassed 3 million monthly active users within a month. In shopping purchases and place reservations, it recorded an average click-through rate of around 25%, while the share of positive responses to its answers stood at about 71%.
Naver plans to roll out the full AI Tab service later this month and expand access to all users. It also aims to strengthen the AI search experience by making AI Tab easier to access from the main screen of mobile search.
AI Briefing, which summarizes search results, is also helping strengthen Naver's competitiveness. The feature analyzes a range of documents and provides concise summaries of key information. It is seen as especially useful for complex queries and follow-up searches. Naver plans to expand AI Briefing to cover about 40% of all search queries by the end of the year.
Industry watchers also say the spread of generative AI may be stimulating demand for portal search. More users are reportedly turning to portal search to verify information or find additional details after receiving broad answers from generative AI services such as ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude.
Naver's domestic content ecosystem is also seen as a competitive advantage. About 20 million creators are active on the Naver platform, and more than 600 million pieces of content are produced each year. With a large amount of everyday information in shopping, local services, finance, and health, Naver is said to maintain strengths in areas that global AI services find difficult to replace.


yjjoe@fnnews.com Jo Yoon-ju Reporter