Vagaband：Shares of Chinese Internet search leader Baidu (BIDU) were up 5.4% in early afternoon trading Wednesday after Barclays Equity Research raised its 12-month price target on the stock to 153 from 189.

Barclays kept its overweight rating on Baidu, but said in a report Wednesday that the company's search traffic and revenue will be impacted by rival Qihoo 360 Technology's (QIHU) launch of its own search engine, so.360.cn.

"While we believe it is a bit late to determine the mid- to long-term impact Qihoo's launch of search services will have on Baidu's financials, to be conservative, our numbers now assume about 16% traffic share and 22% revenue share impacts to Baidu in 2014," Barclays said in the report.

Barclays also wrote: "We believe Baidu will remain a dominant player in search despite Qihoo's launch."

Baidu and Qihoo have engaged in an intense turf war in China since the latter launched its competing search engine this month. China-based tracker Analysys International estimates that Baidu currently controls about 80% of the country's Internet search market. But Qihoo, an anti-virus software provider, has some observers buzzing about its potential.

Qihoo also has been described in some quarters as grabbing search traffic from Baidu and other Internet players such as Google (GOOG) as an aggregator of search results. Qihoo's so.360.cn reportedly offers a comprehensive search feature on its search bar that incorporates results from other search engines.

Baidu reportedly has taken steps to redirect back to Baidu's site users who click on Baidu sites that are displayed on so.360.cn.

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