New rule regulates search engines

April 18, 2003

China's Internet management agency yesterday moved to better regulate companies that provide website search services and ensure they meet basic technical standards.

The regulation, which was issued by the China Internet Network Information Centre (CINIC), aims to provide technical guidance for Internet companies in China collecting and storing website names in data banks. At present, dozens of Chinese Internet service companies provide website search services by key words using different technical standards.

The United States-based AOL and Microsoft have already carved out sizable market shares on the strength of their technical advantages. "Different service providers have different technical standards, which tends to cause inconvenience for Internet users," said CINIC director Mao Wei at yesterday's press conference publicizing the new regulation.

According to Chinese laws and regulations, website search engines can be provided by domestic or foreign Internet companies. "The situation could potentially undermine China's information security if we don't take measures to regulate these services," said Mao.

For example, some foreign companies have data banks of China's websites, giving them free access to any of those sites. In developed countries, website search services can only be provided by qualified companies that are approved by Internet management authorities.

"The technical regulation is our first step towards governing the service," said Mao. Six major domestic Internet companies, including Sohu and Huyi Information Resources, have signed up to the new rule. "The regulation aims to ensure all Internet service providers in China meet certain technical requirements," said Mao.

Source: The China Daily

Read Serge Thibodeau's daily blogs on search engines at Serge Thibodeau Live.
We strongly suggest you bookmark our web site by clicking here.

Get your business or company listed in the Global Business Listing directory and increase your business. It takes less then 24 hours to get a premium listing in the most powerful business search engine there is. Click here to find out all about it.

Rank for $ales strongly recommends the use of WordTracker to effectively identify all your right industry keywords. Accurate identification of the right keywords and key phrases used in your industry is the first basic step in any serious search engine optimization program. The keywords you think are the best may be totally different than the ones recommended by WordTracker. Click here to start your keyword and key phrase research.

You can link to the Rank for Sales web site as much as you like. Read our section on how your company can participate in our reciprocal link exchange program and increase your rankings in all the major search engines such as Google, AltaVista, Yahoo and all the others.