Rumor: MIIT Requires Search Engines to Sign "Self-Discipline" Agreement
National Business Daily, 11/01/12
According to an informed source, China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) brought together a number of China's largest search engines today to sign an agreement of "Search Engine Self-Discipline."
According to the source, following internet company Baidu (Nasdaq: BIDU) and internet services and security software provider Qihoo 360's (NYSE: QIHU) recent public opinion spat, the MIIT and other related departments have decided to bring together representatives from Baidu, Qihoo 360, and Sogou in order to mediate the situation. The MIIT has also launched an investigation into alleged robot.txt protocol violations by Qihoo 360's recently launched So.com search engine.
Editor's Note: The robot.txt protocol or Robot Exclusion Protocol refers to an internet protocol that prevents web crawlers and web robots from accessing certain portions of, or even entire websites. A robot.txt file will instruct search engine spiders whether or not a certain web page can be indexed and included on a search engine's search results page. Some sites will designate a number of pages to be un-indexable because of sensitive, private, or other information included on the page. Robot.txt files do not actively prevent web crawlers from viewing page information, but rather inform crawlers that the site would not like a specific page to be indexed. Since the launch of Qihoo 360's so.com search engine, the site's web crawlers have been rumored to be ignoring robot.txt protocols and indexing Baidu's "Baidu Knows" and "Baidu Encyclopedia" pages for inclusion in so.com's search results.
Keywords: Internet Baidu Baidu Knows Sogou MIIT Robot BIDU Qihoo 360 QIHU online search regulation
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