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The death of a college student with cancer has drawn attention to Baidu Inc.’s advertising practices and the murky online environment for health information in a country where Internet search is subject to censorship and dominated by one company.
Baidufaced harsh criticismfrom online users and state media following the death of Wei Zexi after he tried an alternative treatment for synovial sarcoma, a rare form of tissue cancer. Mr. Wei, who attended Xidian University in Shaanxi province, and his family found the treatment through a sponsored Baidu link.
Chinese users have criticized Baidu’s handling of search results before, claiming it gives too much prominence to misleading medical advertising and in general doesn’t clearly mark sponsored ads. However, the response to Mr. Wei’s case has been especially vigorous, both on social media and by the government.
Chinese authorities havelaunched an investigation of the search giant, and the State Administration for Industry and Commerce said last week it was cracking down on questionable Internet-advertising practices. Baidu’s stock has fallen more than 9% since reports of the investigation surfaced last week. A Baidu spokeswoman declined to comment, citing the investigation. By the end of last week, searches on Baidu for various diseases and medical outlets yielded no sponsored links.
State media comment on the affair also indicated the government was pressing on Baidu about its ad practices.
Commentary last week in 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 over Mr. Wei’s fate, with some calling for the return of Google to China. U.S. search giant Google left China after declining to censor its results in 2010, andGoogle searches are blocked. Beijing has promoted homegrown technology companies over foreign firms, a push that has intensified as the government looks to technology-related industries to drive economic growth. One user of microblogging service Weibo wrote, “Without competition, Baidu is a swindler. This is the evil of monopoly.”
The fact that such comments weren'timmediately blockedsuggested that the government was allowing the public to air its frustration with Baidu, even if it meant drawing attention to Google’s absence. 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 the government might have decided to pull the plug on 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.
By the end of last week, the People’s Daily also struck a different note. In a commentary onthe Wei Zexi tragedy on Friday, the paper didn’t mention Baidu and instead chastised 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 medical information. Baidu has 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 the website caused physical trauma for patients and economic losses for families. Local state media reported last 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. Baidu declined to comment on the issue.
The stakes are high for Baidu becausemuch of its revenue comes from advertising, with medical care one of its top segments. During Baidu’s latest quarter, 94% of its revenue came from online advertising. Baidu doesn’t break down advertising revenue by sector, but for 2014 J.P. Morgan estimated that medical and health-care advertisers accounted for 15% to 25% of Baidu’s total revenue.
Many Web-search companies have specific policies for health-related ads, as well as those involving gambling and alcohol, with algorithms and humans culling suspicious material. It is unclear how Baidu combs through its medical ads and search results; like other search companies, Baidu doesn’t give details on the workings of its search algorithm, what it calls its “secret sauce.” To identify ads in searches, Baidu places small gray wording at the bottom of the displayed links saying “tui guang,” or promotion. Critics say using that identifier 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 ‘promotion’ 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 a bold-type label that says “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 forces 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.
(THE WALL STREET JOURNAL)
