Chinese online auction and e-commerce website Taobao.com has recently announced its latest consumer protection plan, which includes blocking the search engines of Baidu, Google and Yahoo.
According to local media, Taobao.com completely blocked the search engine of Baidu and it also partly blocks that of Google and Yahoo. Taobao.com says that the blocks of search engines aim to eliminate fraud caused by ill-intentioned merchants. Through different blocking degrees over different search engines, it can prevent consumers from being cheated by illegal merchants who gain consumers trust by pay per click and search optimization techniques.
Statistics offered by Taobao.com show that at present, over 80% of consumers complaints are caused by a small number of unscrupulous businesses. One of the main means of these frauds is to optimize the general search results pages through technical and commercial methods, so as to gain higher rankings and attract consumers to click their links and pages. Therefore, blocking some search engines can protect consumers from being deceived.
Apart from blocking search engines, the consumer protection plan for Taobao.com also includes other measures such as a 30-day warranty for digital and appliances products, assurance for antique and jewelry products, certificate check for food products, and appreciation for luxury goods.
Taobao.com is owned by Alibaba Group in China.
