Naver's search share has been on the rise since it strengthened its artificial intelligence (AI) search service.
According to market research firm Internet Trend and Naver on the 21st, Naver's average search share was 63.82% from Jan. 1 to Apr. 26 this year, before the beta launch of the AI Tab service, but came to 66.34% from Apr. 27 to Jun. 17 after the launch. The average search share rose by 2.52 percentage points after the AI Tab launch.
In particular, on the 24th of last month, Naver's search share climbed to 81.34%, topping 80%. In the roughly six weeks since the AI Tab beta launch, there were 14 days when the search share exceeded 70%.
Industry officials say the Conversational AI search service AI Tab, introduced in April, has driven increased search use. AI Tab combines Naver's search infrastructure and AI technology with vertical services such as Shopping and Place. It lets users explore information as if in conversation and supports follow-through to real actions such as booking and purchasing.
AI Tab surpassed 3 million monthly active users (MAU) just a month after its beta launch for Naver Plus Membership users. In shopping purchases and Place reservations, it recorded an average click-through rate (CTR) of around 25%, and the positive feedback click rate on answers was 71%.
Naver plans to start the official AI Tab service at the end of this month and expand it to all users. It will also improve AI Tab accessibility on the mobile search home screen so more users can take advantage of the AI search experience.
AI Briefing is also cited as a pillar of stronger search competitiveness. AI Briefing quickly analyzes and summarizes multiple documents to provide key information. Naver plans to keep expanding AI Briefing coverage to about 40% of all search queries by year-end.
Some say Naver is absorbing demand for re-search and cross-verification by combining AI search with the existing search ecosystem. As more users get approximate answers from Generative AI such as OpenAI's ChatGPT, Google's Gemini, and Anthropic's Claude and then reconfirm related information on portals, demand for Naver search is growing.
A Korea-focused content ecosystem is also cited as Naver's strength. On Naver's platform, about 20 million creators produce 2 million pieces of content a day, more than 630 million a year. With accumulated content reflecting day-to-day information in areas such as local, shopping, finance, and health, as well as Korea's sociocultural context, observers say it has an edge in areas that global search engines or overseas AI services find hard to replace.
Meanwhile, Naver has also been expanding the acquisition of data in specialized fields, including signing an agreement last year to build 30,000 new pieces of knowledge content over the next three years.