Qimao Explained: 七猫, Free Reading, Popularity and Must-Read Votes

Qimao (七猫免费小说, "Seven Cats Free Novels") joined DaoSearch on 29 September as the fifth platform, after Qidian, Fanqie, JJWXC and Faloo. About 110,000 Qimao books are listed here, and the number is still climbing as the catalogue fills in. That makes it one of the smaller catalogues on the site, well under Qidian's roughly 980,000 or Fanqie's 1.77 million.

If you know Fanqie, you already know the model. Qimao is a free, ad-supported reading app: the novels cost nothing to read and the platform earns its money from advertising rather than from paid chapters. It's an app first. It also carries some novels that run on other platforms, so the same story can be listed here and on a source like Zongheng as two separate entries: DaoSearch doesn't merge books across platforms.

What's different is the numbers. Qimao names things its own way, so here's what's on a Qimao row.

What's on Qimao

Qimao splits its readers into a male channel and a female channel, and its catalogue follows that line. On the male side the big categories are Urban (都市), Eastern Fantasy (玄幻), High Concept (脑洞), Transmigration (穿越), System (系统) and Historical (历史). On the female side they're Modern Romance (现代言情), Ancient Romance (古代言情) and Fantastical Romance (幻想言情), plus a run of themes: Doting Romance (甜宠), Rebirth (重生), Billionaire CEO (豪门总裁), Household Intrigue (宅斗) and Marriage Before Love (先婚后爱).

The Audience filter on the Browse page splits the same way. The genre list also has Fanfiction, Anime & ACG, Military, Sports, Strange Events and Competitive Gaming, so most tastes are covered. Tags are curated by hand, so the labels read like English a reader would use (Overpowered MC, Ruthless MC, Sword Path) rather than raw machine output.

Popularity, Readers and Must-read votes

A Qimao book page prints six numbers: Chapters, Popularity, Readers, Must-read votes, Score and Ratings.

Popularity is 累计人气, Qimao's cumulative popularity figure and the one it leads its own book pages with, and a sort of its own. Because it's cumulative it favours books that have been around a long time. The most popular book in the catalogue, One Sword Dominates, is past 100 million.

Readers is how many people are reading the book. It's the cleaner measure of audience size, and sorting by Readers pulls up a different list than Popularity does.

Must-read votes (必读) are votes readers cast to say a book is worth reading. They're a closer cousin of a recommendation than a click, and that sort is a good one if you want books readers actively vouch for.

Score and Ratings go together. The Score is a 0 to 10 rating from readers, and Ratings is how many people gave one. A score means something on a book with a million ratings and very little on one with fifty, so check the count before you trust the number.

Heat (热度) is Qimao's own popularity score, the number its Trending and New Books boards rank by. A daily board counts a day of it and a monthly board a month. Each book also carries a recent heat figure, which works out to roughly the last week of the same score, and that's the catalogue's default sort, Recent heat. Qimao doesn't publish a monthly figure per book, so this is the closest match to the monthly sorts the other platforms open on. Heat tells you how hot a book is right now, not how big it is overall.

Compare Qimao books with each other. Don't set a Qimao popularity number against a Qidian vote count or a Fanqie read count, because they measure different things.

The rankings

Qimao publishes seventeen boards, and each comes in a male view and a female view with a slice per category. There's no board that mixes the two audiences, so every ranking link names one. The main ones:

• Trending (大热榜): the live popularity board and the default, with a monthly version too.
• Must-Read (必读榜): the month's must-read list, built from must-read votes and ratings together.
• Recommended (推荐榜): picked from reading figures and word of mouth.
• Rising (飙升榜): ranked by yesterday's new readers, so it shows what's picking up fastest.
• New Books (新书榜): new serials against each other, with a monthly version.
• Newly Completed (完结榜), plus a Completed (All-time) board, for books that have just finished or have ever finished.
• Top Rated (好评榜): by the share of readers who rated a book good.
• Most Searched (热搜榜): what readers are looking up, daily and monthly.
• Votes, Gifts, Most Fans and Craftsmanship (匠心榜), which rank by reader votes, the value of gifts, yesterday's fan count, and writing quality with engagement.

Pick a category slice instead of the all-books view. Urban Trending and Female Rising are far more readable than one big list. Each ranking row shows Heat, Popularity and Readers, and a book's page lists every board it's placed on under Honours, so you can see at a glance where it stands.

What's hidden

A large share of the records Qimao serves aren't web novels: at last count the stats page held back more than it listed. DaoSearch keeps them but hides them from the catalogue. The gate hides four kinds:

• Print editions. Qimao has a publishing store of licensed print books, from non-fiction to published novels. It was about half of the records we sampled.
• Short stories. Qimao's short-story line, which are one-sitting pieces rather than serials.
• Audiobooks. Qimao's audio albums.
• Stubs. Records with almost no text and at most one chapter.

The stats page shows the held-but-not-listed count beside the listed one. If a Qimao book you know isn't turning up, one of these is the likely reason, and the report link on any book page will tell us about a mistake.

Booklists and comments

Qimao's 书单 are reader-made lists, each one usually an answer to a question like "must-read historical romance with court intrigue". About 3,600 are listed on the booklists page, with the curator's notes where they wrote any. You can sort and filter them, and follow one to get updates. Many haven't been touched in years, and the Updated sort floats the live ones. Why booklists are worth reading.

Qimao also has 话题 discussion threads, but those are free-text posts with no list of books, so they aren't shown here. What you do get on a book page is the reader comments (anonymized and translated), similar books, more by the same author and the booklists the book appears in.

Where to start

1. Open the Must-Read board or the female Trending board and switch to a category.
2. Or browse completed Qimao books sorted by Must-read votes, and add a tag filter.
3. Want something still being written? Add the Updated filter. The search guide covers pasted qimao.com links and the rest.