Baidu has been ordered to reduce the number of paid adverts it can include in its search results. This is just the next step in a continuing story that started after the death of Chinese student, Wei Zexi, who died after the experimental cancer treatment he found on Baidu, didn't work. Following his death, Baidu subsequently came under fire for supposedly selling top medical listings to the highest-bidder, without sufficiently checking their claims. Amongst the changes ordered by the Chinese regulators, were “ensuring that paid-for promotions [didn't make up] more than 30% of search results per page”, and “preventing medical institutions that had not been approved by the government from being promoted on Baidu”. The Chinese search engine has said that it will now completely overhaul its current search results so that they will be ranked by credibility in future.Â
