China's Baidu pledges to improve search service after complaint

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.

Baidu was placing low-quality pieces from its Baijiahao service, which selects articles from both legacy and independent media outlet for display on Baidu's own webpages, and other Baidu properties towards the top of its search results, journalist Fang Kecheng wrote in an article on Tuesday.

The complaint comes after Baidu, often compared to Alphabet Inc's Google, underwent a restructuring and rigorous cleanup of illegal medical advertising that emerged in 2016 and led to regulation that slashed the number of eligible advertisers.

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. 

 "The media attention suggests Baijiahao can be done better," the statement said.

"We will continue to court quality media outlets and creators and use positive mechnaisms to encourage authors to spend high-quality original content," it said, adding Baijinghao was disigned to optimaize restrieval speank of mobine users.