Editors Note: This translated article is the account of a reporter who decided to personally investigate claims that Baidu’s search results were full of fraudulent websites.

After news broke that a woman, Ms. Yao, was scammed when she used Baidu to search and buy plane tickets, a reporter from CCTV decided to investigate claims that Baidu search results’ "promotional links" were a hotbed for scam sites. What the reporter discovered is that consumers can still get scammed from seemingly-safe-yet-actually-fraudulent links that Baidu has "promoted" pretty easily. He knows this, because he himself set up a "fraudulent" website to test the system. In the process of setting up a "fake" website with Baidu, the reporter also discovered that Baidu’s "bidding" process, which is used to rank websites in its "promoted links" section, is still seriously flawed, and directly affects honest advertisers who use Baidu.

Consumers suffer: Baidu makes plane ticket scam look legit

In June, Ms. Yao, who lives in Hangzhou and wanted to fly to Chongqing, ran a search on Baidu for "qunar", (qunar.com is a well-known Chinese travel booking website). But after comparing ticket prices on various websites for a bit, Ms. Yao found that the ticket price found on the first ranked "promoted link" (listed on the right side of the search results page), was nearly 100 RMB cheaper than the qunar.com ticket price. She figured a "promoted site" displayed on a site as large as Baidu probably isn't that dangerous, so she purchased two plane tickets for a June 25th flight through this site. But, even though Ms. Yao's payment went through, her order apparently did not, and she eventually found out that the site she used was fraudulent.

A month later, a CCTV reporter ran the same search query on Baidu for "qunar.com" and discovered that on the "promoted links" results, in addition to the real "qunar.com" link, there was a link to a "20diy" website (which no doubt was also offering better ticket prices). The reporters bought a 446 RMB ticket for a China Eastern Airlines from Wuhan to Guangzhou. After the reporter paid for the ticket, he contacted China Eastern Airlines’ customer service and was informed that the booking was not successful. The reporter then filed a fraudulent website report with the authorities.

Through further investigation by the CCTV reporter, it was discovered that, in addition to the above mentioned plane ticket scam site, Baidu also listed many other scam sites in its "promoted links". Even though Baidu has since cleaned up its act a bit after it was exposed that some scamming sites were listed as "promoted links", searches using certain medical keywords can still result in a number of highly suspicious sites. For example, running a search for "fatty liver treatments" will still list fraudulent sites in the "promoted links". According to regulations, for a website to sell health-related foodstuffs and medicine, it must be approved to sell them and list this information on its website. It comes as no surprise that these fraudulent "promoted links", found by certain medical keyword searches, did not display any of this information on their websites.    

Honest advertisers suffer: Scammers sneak in Baidu’s "backdoor"

How do these scammers sneak into Baidu’s "promoted links"? The reporter went to Baidu to find out. First, he had someone set up a scam "weight-loss" website, and then acquired the necessary counterfeit business licenses and permits, and finally went to the Baidu Marketing Center in Hebei to pay for and register as a "promoted links" client. At the marketing center, an employee pointed out that the provided documents were fake, but then told the reporter how to essentially "cheat the system", saying, that in order to get approved, they should "consult" a previously approved application from a Shijiazhuang company, copy its contents, and re-submit it.

Following this employee's "directions", the reporter was able to get through the application process at Baidu without any problems. And thus, these two completely non-existent companies were openly and legally accepted into Baidu's "promoted links". Afterward, the reporter had a webmaster take this successfully registered and promoted "Beijing Sword Machinery Company" website and change it into a scam site that sold weight-loss products. Using Baidu search, this website was still a "promoted link", and had now become a scam weight-loss website.

On November 15th and 16th of 2008, CCTV did a series of reports on Baidu's Pay-per-click (PPC) ad system. [Editors note: according to Wikipedia, PPC is an advertising model used to direct traffic to websites, where advertisers pay the hosting service when the ad is clicked. With search engines, in this case Baidu, advertisers typically bid on keyword phrases relevant to their target market.] In December of that year, Baidu announced that its new PPC system, "Phoenix Nest", would improve upon the previous one. Baidu claimed that with Phoenix Nest, the clients would make more money than with the previous PPC system.

The truth? The reporter once again investigated. Using the above mentioned "fake" companies, he registered one at the Baidu branch in Beijing, and the other at the Baidu Marketing Center in Hebei. With these two separate accounts registered for "promotional links", and using the same company name, keywords, settings, etc., the reporter found that when doing a search on Baidu, one site was listed first, and the other was listed third. So what kind of criteria is Baidu using to determine their ranking order? 

The "math" behind Baidu’s ranking order determination doesn’t add up

The Baidu marketing center in Hebei stated that its ranking order is jointly-decided by gauging the link's quality as well as by bidding. But the reporter's "experiment" showed some inconsistencies with this explanation. With only a 1 RMB "bid" on the originally third-ranked "Beijing Precious Sword Company", the link magically rose to the first rank, while the real "Hebei Shijiazhuang Longxiang" company actually dropped down.

Originally, in Baidu's PPC bidding system, one client could see the other client's bid (and essentially out-bid them to get first ranking); after the reforms Baidu did to the system, they couldn't. Instead, as a Baidu representative said, you can use the supplied "estimator" to make an educated guess bid. Using this "estimator" the reporter found that to rank first for the searched keyword "CNC drilling machine", a client would need to bid 36 RMB, after which it will probably be ranked first. Likewise, according to this "estimator", bidding 10 RMB would result in a 18th ranked "promotional link". But when the reporter actually placed a bid price of 10 RMB, and then checked the search results, the fake "Beijing Precious Sword Company" was not ranked 18th; it was ranked first! The reporter continued this downward price adjustment and found that to be ranked number one, the high bid was actually only 6.4 RMB. In other words, if the reporter’s fake website is ranked first (at this 6.4 RMB price), even though Baidu’s "estimator" recommended bidding 36 RMB, then each click is wasting 29.4 RMB of the client’s money! (and this money is going to Baidu?)

A Baidu representative said in response that the "estimator" does not take into account the other conditions of the client’s account, and should only be used as a reference. A final point of contention, the reporter also noted that the settings for search keywords on Baidu had nearly no restrictions, and could include many well-known trademarks. The reporter used the famous Chinese brand name "Quanjude" (restaurant and food brand known for its Peking Roast Duck) as one of their fake website's keywords, and to his surprise, the fake website’s "promotional link" moved up to first ranking!
 

Source: sohu

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Keywords: Baidu search engine scam fake promotional links Baidu CCTV report Baidu scam Baidu plane ticket scam