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Baidu - "China's Google" - is accused of letting the unlicensed services pay for prominent positions on its pay-for-performance (P4P) search platform, netting them more clicks for expensive but useless treatments.

The claims sparked widespread public criticism and the browser company has promised action.

"We have removed the key words of

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all four clients mentioned in the report and have begun to double-check the licenses of all other hospitals and pharmacies on our client list," says Baidu's chief executive officer Robin Lihe.

"Baidu employees who are found to have been involved in the scandal will be penalised," he says. "We have already fired people who helped fabricate documents for unlicensed suppliers."

The original television report described several ill people who used Baidu to search for treatments and were steered to unlicensed and expensive hospitals or medicines that failed to cure them.

One patient says he spent nearly £1,000 at one Baidu-boosted clinic that promised to treat abdominal pain, but the treatment was ineffective. He said he was later cured at a public hospital for just £10.

Baidu dominates the Chinese Web search and advertising market, with an estimated two-thirds of the audience in the world's most populous market.