Baidu Scandal and Advertisements
In China, Google is not considered one of their primary search engines as it is in most countries. Due to a conflict in censorship rules, Google decided to shut down its site in the country back in 2010. As a result, Baidu has become the most popular search engine since then. Although Baidu provides similar functions as Google does, there are some major differences such as: foreign site ranking, ad display, language processing, etc.
Although Baidu has done right by serving its purpose, about two years ago, there was a scandal regarding the institutions that pay this company for the details in their search results. A young man by the name of Wei Zexi, passed away amid treatment from “experimental drugs advertised on the search engine”. As a result, there was outcry from the people because they believed that Baidu was just making profit from websites that were not even real. This begged the question, is their SERP and ranking algorithm at fault and are there any biases coming into play?
The pay-per-click model is constantly being used by different search engines, which is how these companies make revenue to begin with. However, these services can be a major concern for those who rely on web searches in order to get accurate information. The life of a young man was put at risk as a result of the fault in a ranking page algorithm. Since then, the Chinese government has introduced regulations such that Baidu increases search results transparency and provides more organic results.
https://www.dragonmetrics.com/baidu-advertising-after-wei-zexi-scandal/