Baiduspider: Baidu's Search Crawler
What is Baiduspider?
Baiduspider is the Baidu search crawler. Baiduspider serves Baidu search results only, so blocking it matters for Chinese-language traffic rather than for AI answers.
Key facts
- Baiduspider is operated by Baidu, and its purpose is classic search: conventional search indexing.
- Baidu publishes no full user-agent string for Baiduspider, so Kymo matches the token Baiduspider observed in real logs.
- The robots.txt token for Baiduspider is Baiduspider, and Baidu documents that Baiduspider respects that rule.
- Baiduspider can send a visitor to your site, and Baiduspider attaches a linked citation when it uses your content.
Specification
| Operator | Baidu |
|---|---|
| Purpose | Classic searchConventional search indexing. On some engines the same index also feeds AI-generated answer surfaces. |
| Agent kind | CrawlerAutonomous crawler. Appears in your logs under its own user-agent. |
| User agent | Not documented by Baidu. Kymo matches this agent on the token Baiduspider, observed in real logs rather than published in operator documentation. |
| robots.txt token | Baiduspider |
| robots.txt compliance | Documented: respects robots.txt |
| Verification | No published method, user agent is the only signal |
| Sends referral traffic | Yes |
| Attaches a citation | Yes |
| Status | Active |
| Legacy Kymo category | indexing |
| Source | Observed in real logs, no operator documentation locatedBaidu publishes no crawler documentation that Kymo could locate. Everything on this page comes from observed traffic, not from a vendor page. |
| Verified on |
What this looks like in your logs
grep -i 'Baiduspider' access.log
Baidu publishes no full user-agent string for Baiduspider, so the rest of the line varies and only the token Baiduspider is dependable. Kymo matches on that token, case-insensitively, for the same reason.
What Baiduspider does not do
Baiduspider does not guarantee a visit, because a read only becomes a visit if a person clicks the citation that came out of it.
Baiduspider does not train a model on what it reads, and it has no part in what any other search engine shows.
Baidu publishes no documentation for Baiduspider at all, so no crawl frequency and no compliance statement exists to quote.
How Kymo classifies it
Kymo files Baiduspider under Baidu as indexing, classified from the HTTP request on the server rather than from anything running in a browser.
A hit from Baiduspider appears on the Crawlers dashboard and is deliberately left out of the AI Visibility numbers. An index sweep produces no click to miss, so counting it there would inflate the read number and break its relationship to the visitor number beside it.
Seen on our own sites
| Last seen | 15 Sep 2026 |
|---|---|
| Days active, last 30 days | 31 |
| Requests, last 30 days | 11,027 |
Counted by Kymo on kymo.in and remotestack.in, the two sites we run, up to 15 Sep 2026. Two sites is a small sample. Treat these numbers as proof the bot is active now.
Allow it or block it
Blocking Baiduspider removes you from Baidu search results. Relevant mainly for sites with Chinese-language traffic.
| Allow it if | Block it if |
|---|---|
| You want to appear in Baidu search results. | Baidu sends you no traffic worth the crawl, which is usually a question of language and region. |
robots.txt directives
Both blocks below address Baiduspider only. Rules for one token never apply to another, even from the same operator.
Allow Baiduspider
User-agent: Baiduspider Allow: /
Block Baiduspider
User-agent: Baiduspider Disallow: /
Questions
How do I know a request claiming to be Baiduspider is genuine?
Baidu publishes no verification method for Baiduspider, so the user-agent string is the only signal available, and anyone can send one. Treat a claimed Baiduspider request as unproven.
Does blocking Baiduspider affect my Google ranking?
No. A Google ranking is decided by Googlebot, which is a separate crawler. Each search engine runs its own crawler and its own index, so blocking Baiduspider removes you from Baidu results and leaves Google untouched.
Will I see Baiduspider in Google Analytics?
No. Google Analytics runs a JavaScript tag in a visitor's browser, and Baiduspider reads your HTML and leaves without running any script. Server-side logging is the only way to record it.
Does Baiduspider send traffic back to my site?
Yes. Baiduspider builds an index that Baidu cites its sources from, and a citation there is a link a person can click. A crawl is still not a visit, so expect the read count to run far ahead of the click count.
Related crawlers
All AI crawlers and control tokens
See this bot in your own logs
Baiduspider decides whether you appear in Baidu results, and a browser tag cannot tell you whether it ever came.
Kymo reads the HTTP request on your server, so a crawler that never runs JavaScript is still recorded. You see which bots reached the site, which pages they took and how often, next to your human traffic.
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