Search Engine Crawlers

Baiduspider-video user agent

Operated by Baidu

Search indexOfficial docs Allow

Baiduspider-video is the Baidu crawler for Baidu video search.

The Baiduspider-video bot at a glance

  • Baiduspider-video is operated by Baidu and crawls web pages for a search engine index.
  • The robots.txt token for Baiduspider-video is Baiduspider-video.
  • Blocking a search engine crawler removes your pages from that search engine's results.
  • Baiduspider-video robots.txt support: Yes.
  • Recommendation for Generative Engine Optimization (GEO): Allow.

What is Baiduspider-video?

A Baiduspider-video rule only affects video on Baidu.

Baidu lists this user agent in its official help on blocking Baiduspider.

Should you block Baiduspider-video?

Allow Baiduspider-video unless it causes a measurable load problem.

Effect on search rankingsBlocking a search engine crawler removes your pages from that search engine's results.
Effect on AI visibilityAI features built on that search index, such as Google AI Overviews and AI Mode on top of Googlebot, also lose access to your pages.
Follows robots.txtYes
RecommendationAllow

How to block or allow Baiduspider-video

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-video is matched case-insensitively.

robots.txt: block

# Block Baiduspider-video
User-agent: Baiduspider-video
Disallow: /

robots.txt: allow

# Allow Baiduspider-video
User-agent: Baiduspider-video
Allow: /

robots.txt: partial

# Keep Baiduspider-video out of private areas only
User-agent: Baiduspider-video
Disallow: /wp-admin/
Disallow: /cart/
Disallow: /checkout/
Disallow: /my-account/
Allow: /

Nginx

# Nginx: return 403 to Baiduspider-video
if ($http_user_agent ~* "(Baiduspider\-video)") {
    return 403;
}

Apache

# Apache .htaccess: return 403 to Baiduspider-video
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} (Baiduspider\-video) [NC]
RewriteRule .* - [F,L]

Cloudflare WAF

# Cloudflare > Security > WAF > Custom rule, action: Block
(http.user_agent contains "Baiduspider-video")

How to verify real Baiduspider-video 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_1

How to find Baiduspider-video in your server logs

Search the web server access log for the token. The command below counts Baiduspider-video requests per URL on Nginx or Apache.

grep -i "Baiduspider-video" access.log | awk '{print $7}' | sort | uniq -c | sort -rn | head -20

For a full report per AI bot, upload the log to the AI Log File Analyzer, a free tool by Justin Hà.

Baiduspider-video FAQ

Baiduspider-video uses the robots.txt token "Baiduspider-video". Baidu does not publish a full user-agent string, so match the token inside the User-Agent header.

Yes. Baidu states that Baiduspider-video follows robots.txt rules written for the "Baiduspider-video" token.

Blocking a search engine crawler removes your pages from that search engine's results. AI features built on that search index, such as Google AI Overviews and AI Mode on top of Googlebot, also lose access to your pages.

Add two lines to the robots.txt file at the root of each domain and subdomain: "User-agent: Baiduspider-video" 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-video 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-video", for example with: grep -i "Baiduspider-video" 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.

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