Baidu to improve service after complaints

SHANGHAI (Reuters) – China’s top search engine Baidu Inc said on Wednesday it will improve its media aggregating service after a complaint about the quality of the service and its search results went viral on social media, helping send its shares down sharply. Baidu was placing low-quality pieces from its Baijiahao service, which selects articles from both legacy and independent media outlets for display on Baidu’s own webpages, and other Baidu properties toward the top of its search results, journalist Fang Kecheng wrote in an article on Tuesday. Baidu on Wednesday acknowledged the article in a post on its Twitter-like Weibo account and said that Baijiahao articles account for roughly 10 percent of its search results. “For Baidu over time, media exposure has been on the negative side,” said Pacific Epoch analyst Raymond Feng, adding Baidu faces competition from other Chinese tech companies, many of which offer a broader range of ad placement styles than Baidu. “Baidu no longer plans on being a good search engine.