BEIJING—Anger over advertising practices on search giant Baidu Inc. has shed light on the murky online environment for patients seeking information about their diseases, in a country where Internet search is subject to censorship and dominated by one company.
Baidu is facing harsh criticism following the death of college student Wei Zexi after he tried an alternative treatment for synovial sarcoma, a rare form of tissue cancer. Mr. Wei and his family found the treatment through a sponsored Baidu link.
Chinese users have criticized Baidu's handling of search results before, but Mr. Wei's case was met with particular vigor. Chinese authorities have launched an investigation of Baidu, and the State Administration for Industry and Commerce said Thursday it was cracking down on questionable Internet-advertising practices. The company's stock has plunged more than 9% since reports of the investigation surfaced Monday.
China has promoted its homegrown tech nology companies over foreign firms, a push that has intensified as Beijing increasingly looks to technology-related industries to drive economic growth. U.S. search giant Google left China after declining to censor its results in 2010, and Google searches are blocked.
State media commentaries on the Baidu affair suggested the government was adding pressure on Baidu to clean up its act. A Sunday commentary in the Communist Party's official newspaper, the People's Daily, said, "If a company is only chasing the economic benefits and ignoring the social benefits, abandoning trust and forgetting about responsibilities, how much further can it advance as a business?"
On social media, users urged a boycott of Baidu, with some calling for the return of Google to China. One user of microblogging service Weibo wrote, "Without competition, Baidu is a swindler. This is the evil of monopoly."
The fact that the comments weren't immediately blocked was seen as a sign the government was allowing the public to air its frustration with Baidu, even if it meant comparing it to Google. Later in the week, some comments appeared to have been taken down.
King-Wa Fu, an associate professor at the University of Hong Kong who analyzes censorship trends, said it appeared the government was beginning to clamp down on the Baidu bashing.
"It's not uncommon for the state to exercise no control on public discussion for the first few days but then ask state media to stop reporting and then start censoring" issues like this, Mr. Fu said.
The People's Daily also changed its tone. In a commentary on the Wei Zexi tragedy on Friday, the paper didn't mention Baidu, but instead castigated Chinese patients with terminal diseases for clinging to unrealistic hope.
Medical research papers are available online via Chinese databases, but large numbers of Chinese still prefer advice from fellow patients in online forums. That has made Baidu the main go-to site for medical information.
In January, Baidu came under criticism after it sold the rights to moderate such a forum for patients with hemophilia to a company that Internet users said populated the site with questionable information. Baidu ha s since said it has stopped commercial operation of the forums.
The same month, 37 nongovernmental organizations reported Baidu to the commerce bureau in Beijing's Haidian district, where the company has its headquarters, saying that misleading medical advertising on Baidu caused physical trauma for patients and economic losses for families. Local state media reported this week that the Haidian Administration of Industry and Commerce is investigating the complaint. A person answering the phone at the Hadian agency said she had no information on the matter.
The stakes are high for Baidu because much of its revenue comes from advertising, with medical care one of its top sectors. During Baidu's latest quarter, 94% of its revenue came from online advertising. Baidu doesn't break down advertising revenue by sector; J.P. Morgan estimated that medical and health-care advertisers accounted for 15% to 25% of Baidu's total revenue in 2014.
Many Web-search compani es have specific policies for health-related ads, along with ads involving gambling and alcohol, with algorithms and humans working to spot suspicious ads. It is unclear how Baidu combs through its medical ads and search results. A Baidu spokeswoman declined to comment, citing the continuing investigation.
By the end of the week, searches on Baidu for various diseases and medical outlets yielded no sponsored links.
Like other search companies, Baidu doesn't give details on how its search algorithm, what it calls its "secret sauce," works.
To identify ads, Baidu places small gray wording at the bottom of the link displayed in a search saying "tui guang," or promotion. Critics say using that word instead of "guang gao," or advertisement, and lumping sponsored results in with regular ones is misleading.
"The issue is how do you blend them?" said a person familiar with the search business in China. "Baidu uses the ambiguous word 'promoti on' on the bottom and it's not very noticeable."
By contrast, Google marks its sponsored links atop its presentation of search results in a yellow box. On Yahoo, sponsored links are identified via words in bold type that say "ads related to," along with a gray line that demarcates the end of the sponsored links and the beginning of news and search results.
When searching "cancer" on Google, top results include academic articles and public organizations such as the American Cancer Society. The same search on Baidu links to a number of Baidu medical forums or ads.
Complaints about Baidu's advertising practices aren't limited to users. As China's biggest search engine by far, Baidu has faced complaints from advertisers about its tough negotiating tactics. They say the company requires them to ramp up advertising spending each year, which leaves them little money for marketing on other platforms. Baidu declined to comment on the matter.
—Fanfan Wang contributed to this article
Source: China's Baidu Search Draws Unusually Loud Outcry After Student's Death
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