Sohu.com (SOHU) has launched the upgraded version of its search engine at SoGou.com with an expanded reach of 500 million Chinese-language indexed web pages.

"This is the year in which our prime focus is on bringing to the market a superior search product based on powerful technology that gives our users an excellent search experience. Search is one of the most promising areas of growth in the Chinese Internet market and our goal is to be a top player in this market," said Charles Zhang, Chairman and CEO of Sohu.

Sohu has fierce Chinese-language search engine competition from websites such Google, Baidu, Sina, and Yahoo.

SoGou is now capable of searching through 500 million indexed web pages, and Sohu says this database is expected to double to 1 billion pages in the coming months. SoGou's scalable and proprietary technology combines the web page search with Sohu's website directory, and delivers a list of relevant results.

The new SoGou version 2.0 features higher updating speed of web pages to less than ten minutes and overall quicker search time. SoGou 2.0 also includes more interactive search features such as automatic error correction and automatic recommendation of relevant key words.