Law experts and industry insiders in China have called for urgent regulation of the country's Internet search engines as pitfalls emerge in their level of service. CRI's Zheng Chenguang takes a closer look.

Reporter:
It goes without saying that the Internet has become an essential part of everyday life. But an essential way to make effective use of the Internet is to enter the increasingly murky waters of search engines.

Mr Li, a Beijing resident, talks about how he ended up falling victim to one Internet search engine.

"I wanted to repair my television which is a model produced by Sharp. So I used a search engine to locate a Sharp service provider. I found one and spent a lot of money on it but the problem is still there. Later I found out it was not a real Sharp service provider at all."

The search engines mainly obtain their profit from selling placement to their content providers. A higher ranking would denote a higher fee.

As such a business is not defined as advertisement, there's no law currently available to supervise this commercial conduct.

Zhang Xinwei is a lawyer with one of Beijing's Law Firms.

"A lack of legal regulation means you can do this and easily get away with it. So we need an urgent adoption of laws that can supervise the Internet, especially search engines."

Shen Haoyu, vice president of Baidu, China's Nasdaq-listed Internet giant, says search engine operators should not shoulder all the blame.

"We have taken strict and transparent measures to screen the legitimacy of our clients. But the Internet itself is filled with fake information. It requires the joint efforts of all sides to purify the Internet environment, including government support and legislation."

By June this year, China's total number of netizens stood at 250 million with 70% of them using search engines on a daily basis.

Zheng Chenguang, CRI news.