Baiduspider user agent
Operated by Baidu
Baiduspider is Baidu's crawler that indexes pages for Baidu Search, the largest search engine in China.
The Baiduspider bot at a glance
- Baiduspider is operated by Baidu and crawls web pages for a search engine index.
- The robots.txt token for Baiduspider is Baiduspider.
- Blocking a search engine crawler removes your pages from that search engine's results.
- Baiduspider robots.txt support: Yes.
- Recommendation for Generative Engine Optimization (GEO): Allow.
What is Baiduspider?
Baiduspider crawls pages for Baidu Search. Sites targeting Chinese-speaking users need it to be indexed in China.
Baidu supports reverse DNS verification: genuine crawler hostnames end in baidu.com or baidu.jp.
Should you block Baiduspider?
Allow Baiduspider unless it causes a measurable load problem.
| Effect on search rankings | Blocking a search engine crawler removes your pages from that search engine's results. |
|---|---|
| Effect on AI visibility | 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. |
| Follows robots.txt | Yes |
| Recommendation | Allow |
How to block or allow Baiduspider
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 is matched case-insensitively.
robots.txt: block
# Block Baiduspider
User-agent: Baiduspider
Disallow: /robots.txt: allow
# Allow Baiduspider
User-agent: Baiduspider
Allow: /robots.txt: partial
# Keep Baiduspider out of private areas only
User-agent: Baiduspider
Disallow: /wp-admin/
Disallow: /cart/
Disallow: /checkout/
Disallow: /my-account/
Allow: /Nginx
# Nginx: return 403 to Baiduspider
if ($http_user_agent ~* "(Baiduspider)") {
return 403;
}Apache
# Apache .htaccess: return 403 to Baiduspider
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} (Baiduspider) [NC]
RewriteRule .* - [F,L]Cloudflare WAF
# Cloudflare > Security > WAF > Custom rule, action: Block
(http.user_agent contains "Baiduspider")How to verify real Baiduspider 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 in your server logs
Search the web server access log for the token. The command below counts Baiduspider requests per URL on Nginx or Apache.
grep -i "Baiduspider" 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 FAQ
Baiduspider uses the robots.txt token "Baiduspider". Baidu does not publish a full user-agent string, so match the token inside the User-Agent header.
Yes. Baidu states that Baiduspider follows robots.txt rules written for the "Baiduspider" 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" 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 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", for example with: grep -i "Baiduspider" 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.
