Popular Internet search engine Google is losing ground to its main rival in China as it fails to attract as many college students and other young people, according to a survey compiled by China's official Internet statistics cruncher.

Over the past six months, Baidu.com share of the Internet search market in three key cities, Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou, has risen by over 10 per cent, while Google's has stood still despite a growing number of Internet users in China, the China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC) said Monday.

Over half of the Web users surveyed in Beijing, 51.5 per cent, preferred to search the Internet using Baidu, while Google took second place with a 32.9 per cent share of the market and Yahoo Inc. came in fifth with only 3.7 per cent.

In Shanghai, the race was closer, with Baidu at 43.9 per cent and Google second at 38.2 per cent, while in Guangzhou, Baidu led Google 48 per cent to 28.7 per cent, CNNIC said. The survey was conducted in August.

Among young people in the three Chinese cities, nearly two-thirds of the under-25 crowd use Baidu, compared to 23.7 per cent for Google. College students prefer Baidu by over two to one to Google, according to the CNNIC statistics, or 58.9 percent to 27.7 per cent.

The figures could prompt Google to revise its China strategy. China's Internet scene has been hot lately, with Yahoo earlier this month agreeing to pay US$1 billion and transfer all of its Chinese businesses to China's Alibaba.com Corp. for a 40 per cent stake in the company.

Baidu, a company Google owns a 2.6 per cent stake in, also raised over US$100 million in its recent public stock offering in the U.S., adding to its war chest.

Companies and analysts see a lot of potential in China's Internet market. The country ranks behind only the U.S. in terms of total Internet users, with 103 million, according to CNNIC. While that's only about half the number of users in the U.S., it accounts for only 8 per cent of China's population, compared to nearly 69 per cent for the U.S.