Why Baidu's gray interest chain is difficult to remove: agency problems or technical flaws?
Recently, Baidu's search business promotion was once again investigated by the National Internet Information Office (hereinafter referred to as the "National Cyberspace Office") due to the gambling website incident. On July 18, the relevant person in charge of the National Cyberspace Office said that after the "Baidu Night Promotion Gambling Website Event" on July 17, the National Cyberspace Office had asked the Beijing Cyberspace Office to conduct an investigation and timely publish the investigation results. It is reported that the user information of the above enterprises involved was stolen as the registration information for the promotion of gambling websites on Baidu. The commercial promotion of gambling websites was quietly launched after 10 p.m. and all were offline before 9 a.m. the next day.
In an interview with reporters, Baidu said that after online inspection, it was found that the gambling information on the website involved was the content of the company's late night unauthorized changes. At present, Baidu has reported to the public security organ.
The non enterprise channel salesperson of Baidu agent revealed to the reporter that if the enterprise account with stolen information is complained, just offline the complained account and replace it with another new company. Some insiders said that Baidu's gray interest chain is difficult to remove, or it has something to do with Baidu's sales model using the agent system.
Baidu's late night promotion of gambling websites has technical flaws. In May this year, Baidu Search's commercial promotion was jointly investigated by the Internet Information Office and other departments due to the "Weijersey incident". However, just over the past two months, on July 17, Baidu Search was again investigated by the Internet Information Office due to the late night promotion of gambling websites, which once again pushed Baidu's commercial promotion to the forefront of the wind.
According to the public report, it was found that non enterprise gambling websites embezzled enterprise information to register Baidu accounts to organize promotion late at night, and quietly went offline in the early morning of the next day. The promotion cost of several gambling websites in Baidu exceeded 300000 yuan in one night. In addition, Baidu's "Aladdin Plan", which charged hundreds of millions of yuan of diversion fees to vertical websites, did not find "commercial promotion" and other signs in the search.
On July 19, Baidu said in its reply to reporters that after rapid online inspection, it was found that the gambling information in the website reported by the media was all the content of the company's late night unauthorized changes. At present, Baidu has reported the case to the public security organ, and is stepping up the collection of evidence to actively assist in the investigation.
According to the query, these promotion websites all opened accounts at the end of April after passing the normal enterprise promotion qualification and materials and the review, but they did not carry out promotion until 11 p.m. on June 25, when they suddenly went online to modify the content for promotion. At 6 a.m. on June 26, they were found by the system patrol and investigated and banned.
Baidu said that the above incident reflected that Baidu still had imperfections in its anti cheating system. Baidu was responsible for reviewing the qualification subject and submitting materials, but the specific landing website page of customers was not controlled by Baidu. "Since the materials involved in the whole network are up to 100 million levels every day, it takes 3-4 hours for technical identification only to scan the whole network once. There is indeed a certain lag. Next, the identification accuracy and coverage of the identification system will be further strengthened, and efforts will be made to crack down on illegal content."
On July 19, Ge Jia, an Internet analyst, also said in an interview with reporters that the gambling website incident involved complex technical problems. Baidu had no problems in the qualification review and advertising review stages. The changes made by criminals in the promotion involved real-time dynamic review. It was very difficult to prevent and control, and the technical requirements were also high.
Baidu said that gambling is a serious illegal act and that any commercial promotion involving gambling is strictly prohibited. At the beginning of 2016, Baidu cooperated with the public security organs to crack down on illegal gambling websites, and many criminals have been arrested. In the first quarter of this year alone, Baidu checked 8623 illegal gambling websites (equivalent to an average of nearly 100 illegal websites every day, including the four illegal websites exposed this time), and prohibited 7239 illegal words related to gambling, including 6858 gambling words and 326 gambling lottery words.
However, several Baidu non enterprise channel salesmen said that most of Baidu non enterprise channel user authentication information was stolen, and the company did not know about the stolen information. If the account is complained, the agent or non enterprise channel salesperson will offline the reported account, change the company's registered account the next day, and continue to promote illegal websites.
Cao Lei, director of the China E-Commerce Research Center, said in an interview that the gambling website event reflected Baidu's commercial promotion and use of agent system, and there was a loophole in management.
"The so-called non enterprise channel can be regarded as a secondary agent. Since Baidu's direct agents are all provincial agents, some customers may sink deeper, which is difficult for agents to cover, so the secondary agent mechanism is launched and corresponding rebates and discounts are given." In the eyes of industry insiders, the so-called non enterprise channel is an agent that helps Baidu's regular agents to attract consumption.
It is understood that Baidu has performance assessment requirements for agents. In December 2015, Baidu took back its former agent Jiangsu Shidewei Network Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Shidewei")'s agency rights in Suzhou, Yangzhou, Huai'an and Suqian.
Chen Deyang, general manager of Stowe, said that since 2014, Baidu's Regional General Agent Policy stipulates that if the completion rate of click consumption in a quarter is lower than 95% of the target, Baidu will fine the agent and have the right to cancel its agency qualification. Since the discount given to non enterprise customers is far greater than the discount given by Baidu to agents, agents need to pay for the price difference of these transactions in order to complete the task without being fined.
According to Baidu's 2015 financial report, online promotion is its main source of income. In 2015, the total revenue was 66.4 billion yuan, including 64 billion yuan of online promotion revenue, accounting for about 96.5%. Baidu promotion is mainly operated through agents in China. Our reporter learned from the agent inquiry on the official home page of Baidu promotion that at present, there are more than 50 agents of Baidu in the country, while in many provinces, only one agent monopolizes the operation.
Ge Jia believes that there are some problems in Baidu's agent system, but in the event of this gambling website, there are still no agent problems, and more of them are Baidu's technical deficiencies.
Baidu said that for Baidu platform, there is no concept of non enterprise, and no matter what channel development promotion customers, they all use a unified standard for enterprise online review. At the same time, if the promotion customers are investigated for illegal acts, the corresponding channel agents will also be severely punished.
More than two months ago, Baidu's commercial promotion was jointly investigated and required to be rectified by the National Cyberspace Office and other departments due to the "Wei Jersey incident". On May 2, the National Office for Cyberspace Affairs took the lead in setting up a joint investigation team to investigate Baidu. On May 9, the joint investigation team announced its findings that Baidu's bidding ranking mechanism had problems such as too high the weight of paid bidding and unclear the logo of commercial promotion, which affected the fairness and objectivity of search results and easily misled Internet users, requiring Baidu to immediately rectify.
The rectification includes immediate and comprehensive rectification of medical and other commercial promotion services related to people's life, health and safety; Change the bidding ranking mechanism, not just the amount of money as the ranking standard; We will establish and improve mechanisms for protecting the rights and interests of Internet users, such as advance compensation.
After the release of the investigation results, Baidu responded on the same day that it firmly supported the rectification requirements of the investigation team and made corresponding rectification. Since late May, Baidu's search results have fully realized that the number of commercial promotion messages per page accounts for less than 30%, and the number of promotion messages per page has also reached no more than 4; The commercial promotion information shall be marked with eye-catching signs one by one, and risk warning shall be given.
However, just over the past two months, Baidu's commercial promotion has again attracted the attention of the National Cyberspace Office and said that it would investigate Baidu. The relevant person in charge of the National Cyberspace Office stressed that search engine enterprises such as Baidu must strictly implement the newly issued Regulations on the Administration of Internet Information Search Services, earnestly fulfill the main responsibility of the website and corporate social responsibility, and resolutely not provide channels for the dissemination of illegal information such as gambling. At the same time, the National Cyberspace Office and Beijing Cyberspace Office will strictly investigate and deal with relevant violations according to the investigation results.
"This time, the National Cyberspace Office intervened to investigate Baidu's commercial promotion, and Baidu is unlikely to face rectification again. This incident has obviously involved the criminal and judicial levels, so it is only necessary to prove that the incident was not formed subjectively by Baidu, but someone deliberately took advantage of loopholes to do illegal acts." Ge Jia told reporters.
Ge Jia believes that this gambling event and the last "Wei Jersey Event" are two things in nature. The "Wei Jersey Event" involves many common problems of advertising in search promotion, including how to do medical promotion, confusion of netizens' cognition caused by mixing advertising and natural search results, etc; This gambling website is an isolated event that is not universal, and it is a loophole in Baidu's strict prevention.
