China issued new regulations on Saturday demanding search engines clearly identify paid search results, months after a terminally-ill cancer patient complained that he was misled by the giant search engine Baidu.
Wei Zexi, a college student who died in April of a rare cancer, had written a long post on a Chinese website detailing how he was led to a Beijing hospital for treatments after searching on Baidu. He said that the treatment turned out to be ineffective and expensive and that later he learned the therapy was yet to be fully approved.
Wei accused Baidu of taking money to promote less proven treatments.
The Cyberspace Administration of China announced on its website the new regulations, which also ban search engines from showing subversive content and obscene information. Such prohibitions have been long in place, but it is the first time China explicitly regulates paid search results.
The administration said search engines must review the qualifications of paying clients, clearly identify paid results, and limit the number of paid results on a web page.
When Wei's post became publicly known in May, Baidu was widely denounced for its practice of blurring promotional search results with legitimate ones on the home search page. Its chief executive Robin Li was called in by China's web regulators for talks.
Baidu on Saturday responded by pledging to work with regulators and web users in providing objective, fair, and trustworthy search results, according to Chinese media.
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