What Has Baidu Changed To Baidu After Its Rectification?

Net letter office has come to the deadline for the rectification of Baidu. What is the fate of the Baidu turmoil triggered by the "Wei Zexi incident"?

In May 31st, it was the deadline for Baidu to complete the promotion of information adjustment.

23 days ago, because

The joint investigation team set up jointly by the State Administration of industry and Commerce and the national health and Family Planning Commission was set up.

The investigation was carried out, and the results of the survey were released to the public. Baidu was asked to make a number of rectification requests.

"Information on commercial promotion should be marked up one by one, and risk warning should be given. Strictly restricting the proportion of commercial promotion information, no more than 30% pages per page."

These two points in the rectification provisions are really binding requirements for Baidu.

In Robin Li's words, this "Wei Zexi incident" has aroused the anger of netizens, more than any crisis that Baidu experienced before.

The most fundamental reason is that it may have touched Baidu's most fundamental business model.

What is Baidu's request for rectification?

In May 9th, the investigation team requested that the rectification of Baidu include:

First, we should promptly and comprehensively clean up medical services and other commercial promotion services that are closely related to people's lives, health and safety.

From now on, the relevant commercial promotion activities such as health care, medicine, health care products and so on shall be comprehensively cleaned up and straighten out. Once the illegal information is discovered, it will be immediately offline.

Two, change the competitive bidding mechanism, not only to the amount of money as the standard of ranking.

Immediately adjust the relevant technology system, before May 31, 2016, put forward the ranking algorithm with the credibility as the main weight and put it in place; put the eye-catching logo on the commercial promotion information one by one, and give the risk hint; strictly limit the proportion of commercial promotion information, each page should not exceed 30%.

Three, establish and improve the rights and interests protection mechanism of Internet users.

We should unimpede the channels of supervision and reporting by netizens, improve the efficiency of receiving and disposing of users' reports, immediately terminate service on illegal information and infringement of netizens' rights and interests, establish and perfect relevant mechanisms, and compensate the users for losses caused by misleading information of commercial promotion.

On the same day, Baidu search chief executive Xiang Hailong said "firmly support" and "never make a slight discount".

In response to these three requirements, Baidu Inc has made corresponding rectification responses, including changing the sorting mechanism of the past business promotion results based on price, controlling the number of commercial promotion results, marking the commercial promotion information in all search results, and making effective risk warning.

Baidu also promised to implement the above rectification requirements by May 31st.

In May 10th, Robin Li also said in an open letter to his employees that Baidu would reexamine the business model of all the products of the company, and put forward suggestions for improvement, including improving the user feedback mechanism and improving the existing user rights and interests protection mechanism.

In that letter, Robin Li rarely reconsidered and relentlessly reminded the team, "if you lose the support of your users and lose your hold on values, Baidu is really only 30 days away from bankruptcy."

"What happened to Google Baidu?"

In May 24th, Baidu announced a week ahead of Baidu search rectification, Baidu promoted its official.

Announce the results of phased rectification.

So, what is the actual effect of Baidu's rectification? Is it really "resolutely implemented without making a slight discount" as it had previously responded to the outside world?

There are no more than four pages per business promotion.

Previously, the investigation team, led by the network office, made it clear in its rectification request that, at the latest in May 31, 2016, "the commercial promotion information should be marked up with a highlighting logo and risk warning, and the proportion of commercial promotion information should be strictly restricted, and no more than 30% pages per page".

In response to these two rigid requirements, Baidu made feedback in May 17th and May 23rd.

Since the beginning of May 17th, the promotion of Baidu search results page has been changed to a more prominent word of "commercial promotion". At the same time, the buoy risk warning is also set up: "the search results are commercial promotion information, please pay attention to possible risks.

Baidu launched a plan to protect users' rights and interests.

Just a week later, Baidu's search page again showed slight changes.

For example, when we entered "cold" in Baidu search, we found that in the total of 14 search results, there were 3 links and 1 commercial promotion links at the beginning and the end.

Besides medical information, the proportion of other commercial promotion information seems to have been adjusted accordingly.

When young people often search for "flowers" as keywords, in addition to the relevant information on the right column of the front page, the total number of commercial promotional information in the 14 search results is 4 at the beginning and end of the page.

It is worth mentioning that at the beginning of this year, the international search giant Google had made the biggest adjustment since its birth: the right advertisement was canceled, and 4 advertisements were displayed above the search results.

Although the difference between the two companies is not large at present, it is different from Baidu's presentation. Google's top 4 advertisements are without shading.

Google's move has been questioned by some users, saying Google's new page layout is a very bad move.

In the eyes of many people, Google's auction search ads include headlines, links and descriptions. Four ads with no shading reminders will occupy a lot of screen space in the search results on the left side of the page.

This means that users can only see the web search results they want on the lower side of the screen.

In terms of user experience, Baidu and Google will not mix natural results with commercial promotion at present, and both sides have clear identification.

However, in the first half of Baidu's search results, there were 3 and 1 commercial promotion links respectively.

Application system for guarantee payment

Now, on the right side of Baidu's web page, Baidu has added the entrance of Baidu search to V guarantee.

Baidu pointed out that when the netizens were logged in Baidu account, they could click on the search results website with the word "Bao" and Baidu's reputation "V". If they had direct economic losses due to the existence of false and illegal promotion of the website, they could apply for protection payments to Baidu and receive consumer rights support.

In addition, Baidu said that the audit efforts have been intensified in the back-end. In view of the four industries of medical, pharmaceutical, health care and food, Baidu has adopted a strict examination mechanism for commercial promotion.

Offline 2518 medical institutions

In the most concerned field of medical information, during the joint investigation team, Baidu processed 2518 medical institutions and 126 million medical information.

In addition, Baidu has removed a lot of promotional content from the search results page of the disease.

Now the search for "An Zhen Hospital of Beijing", the whole page is the official website of the Department, the Department, the doctor.

In the past, other hospital information that had nothing to do with An Zhen Hospital would appear. But after Baidu's rectification, there will be no competition advertisements.

What does Baidu rectification bring to users?

Judging from the current results, Baidu accepted the rectification this time, partly to achieve a clearer distinction between the results of commercial promotion and natural search results.

Before that, it was widely criticized that users could not distinguish the two effectively.

The rectification of Baidu tried to change the price based bidding mechanism to a certain extent, and introduced the customer credit evaluation model.

In the past, Baidu also added a light red background to all its promotional content, and set up a light blue "promotion" to remind the users to distinguish business promotion information from natural search results at the bottom of the link.

After the rectification, Baidu replaced all the "promotion" signs in the search results page with the words "commercial promotion" and placed them in the more prominent right upper part, by enhancing the recognition degree of commercial promotion and comparing with the normal search results.

On the other hand, promoting the identification changes of information may enhance the risk hints to users.

When Internet users browse the search results through Baidu, as long as the mouse moves to the "commercial promotion" logo, it will automatically pop up the buoy bar. Its contents include: "the search results are commercial promotion information, please pay attention to the possible risks.

Baidu launched a plan to protect users' rights and interests.

However, in view of the initial stage of implementation, the specific effect has not yet been known.

"Baidu rectification will be forced to search for upgrading the form?"

Before and after the investigation team released the survey results, 360 and Sogou seized the opportunity to attract the attention of many media and netizens.

First, 360 announced that it would give up all consumer medical business promotion business, and said, "the health and life of users are supreme. An early death makes us feel sorry, let us wake up and urge us to act.

360 search will stop all consumer medical business promotion business.

Then, Sogou launched "Sogou Ming medicine".

In an open letter, Wang Xiaochuan said: "when users initiate medical related search requests, Sogou search will give priority to the display of non-commercial, authentic and authoritative medical information and guide them into the Sogou Ming Medical channel. The channel provides authoritative content including Wikipedia, Zhi Yu community, academic periodicals, Ding Xiangyuan and other websites, as well as the professional content of regular large hospitals, CDC, who and research institutes, and provides international leading English research papers in collaboration with well-known foreign search companies."

360 and Sogou's intention is clear, that is to show the fairness of their search results, diverting Baidu users.

But it is obvious that all search engines in China are not easy to achieve.

Similarly, "flowers" are used as keywords in search of 360 and Sogou, and commercial promotion information is 6 and 9 respectively.

Perhaps the most fundamental problem is how to balance business interests. For Baidu, which was previously only BAT in search business, the net profit margin of Q3 reached 53% in 2012 and dropped to 29% in 2013.

But this part of the profit is not reduced from the source, but in the process of Baidu mobile pformation, it has made great efforts to invest in new areas such as artificial intelligence.

The source of high R & D costs is search advertising.

From the global perspective, search engine ranking advertising has always been the main source of profit and cash flow of search engines.

Whether it's Google, YAHOO, Bing or China's 360, Sogou, it gives priority to the search results of ordinary users. The algorithm is not generated naturally according to the relevance of search terms, nor is it what users most need, but paid advertising.

It also shows that even if Baidu decides to change its competitive power ranking mode, it is not yet clear whether it will touch.

Perhaps there will be a new way of presenting information in the future to subvert the rules of search bidding.