China has, once again, began cracking down on search content. This crack down is in response, at least partially, to the death of the college sophomore Wei Zexi. Now, according to Bloomberg, China has begun requiring search engines to “report banned content and verify advertisers’ qualifications.”
In the report, it says that any “banned information” can’t be maintained or presented in search results in anyform, such as cached pages, recommendations and links. Search engines must also identify and report any sites that contain banned content.
This situation has taken rise with the Wei Zexi case, as he died earlier this year when he pursued a bogus cancer treatment in Baidu search results. At the time, China wasn’t regulating claims in search ads.
There had been an outcry by the Chinese public in concern with Baidu misleading Chinese customers. Apparently, a number of individuals in China didn’t know there there were links at the top of search results that constituted as ads. Not only did Baidu say there were going tor educe the number of ads shown, but the company was going to create a fund to combat fraud.
With these new search rules, the public should be more protected from false advertising or shady advertisers.