Baiduspider-ads user agent
Operated by Baidu
Baiduspider-ads is the Baidu crawler for Baidu business search and advertising.
The Baiduspider-ads bot at a glance
- Baiduspider-ads is operated by Baidu and checks landing pages for an advertising platform.
- The robots.txt token for Baiduspider-ads is Baiduspider-ads.
- Blocking a platform fetcher has no effect on organic search rankings.
- Baiduspider-ads robots.txt support: Yes.
- Recommendation for Generative Engine Optimization (GEO): Allow.
What is Baiduspider-ads?
Advertisers on Baidu should allow it.
Baidu lists this user agent in its official help on blocking Baiduspider.
Should you block Baiduspider-ads?
Allow Baiduspider-ads unless it causes a measurable load problem.
| Effect on search rankings | Blocking a platform fetcher has no effect on organic search rankings. |
|---|---|
| Effect on AI visibility | Blocking breaks the feature the fetcher serves, such as ad approval or feed updates. |
| Follows robots.txt | Yes |
| Recommendation | Allow |
How to block or allow Baiduspider-ads
Put the robots.txt rule in the file at the root of every domain and subdomain, for example https://example.com/robots.txt. The token Baiduspider-ads is matched case-insensitively.
robots.txt: block
# Block Baiduspider-ads
User-agent: Baiduspider-ads
Disallow: /robots.txt: allow
# Allow Baiduspider-ads
User-agent: Baiduspider-ads
Allow: /robots.txt: partial
# Keep Baiduspider-ads out of private areas only
User-agent: Baiduspider-ads
Disallow: /wp-admin/
Disallow: /cart/
Disallow: /checkout/
Disallow: /my-account/
Allow: /Nginx
# Nginx: return 403 to Baiduspider-ads
if ($http_user_agent ~* "(Baiduspider\-ads)") {
return 403;
}Apache
# Apache .htaccess: return 403 to Baiduspider-ads
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} (Baiduspider\-ads) [NC]
RewriteRule .* - [F,L]Cloudflare WAF
# Cloudflare > Security > WAF > Custom rule, action: Block
(http.user_agent contains "Baiduspider-ads")How to verify real Baiduspider-ads traffic
Reverse DNS check: look up the request IP, confirm the hostname ends in baidu.com, baidu.jp, then look up that hostname and confirm it returns the same IP.
# 1. Reverse lookup: the hostname must end in baidu.com, baidu.jp
host REQUEST_IP
# 2. Forward lookup: must return the same REQUEST_IP
host HOSTNAME_FROM_STEP_1How to find Baiduspider-ads in your server logs
Search the web server access log for the token. The command below counts Baiduspider-ads requests per URL on Nginx or Apache.
grep -i "Baiduspider-ads" access.log | awk '{print $7}' | sort | uniq -c | sort -rn | head -20For a full report per AI bot, upload the log to the AI Log File Analyzer, a free tool by Justin Hà.
Baiduspider-ads FAQ
Baiduspider-ads uses the robots.txt token "Baiduspider-ads". Baidu does not publish a full user-agent string, so match the token inside the User-Agent header.
Yes. Baidu states that Baiduspider-ads follows robots.txt rules written for the "Baiduspider-ads" token.
Blocking a platform fetcher has no effect on organic search rankings. Blocking breaks the feature the fetcher serves, such as ad approval or feed updates.
Add two lines to the robots.txt file at the root of each domain and subdomain: "User-agent: Baiduspider-ads" followed by "Disallow: /". The token is case-insensitive. Changes can take up to 24 hours to be picked up.
Yes. Run a reverse DNS lookup on the request IP; a real Baiduspider-ads request resolves to baidu.com, baidu.jp, and a forward lookup of that hostname returns the same IP.
Search your server access log for "Baiduspider-ads", for example with: grep -i "Baiduspider-ads" access.log. The AI Log File Analyzer by Justin Hà counts visits per AI bot from an uploaded log file.
Sources: Baidu crawler documentation. Last reviewed by Justin Hà.
See which of these bots actually reach your website
The AI Log File Analyzer by Justin Hà counts visits from GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot and other AI crawlers in your server log, for free. The GEO Technical Package sets up robots.txt, llms.txt and crawler access for AI search.
