Baiduspider Crawling and Indexing Guide: How to Improve Access and Crawling Efficiency

Before we get into the details of Baiduspider crawling and indexing, let’s first take a closer look at how Baiduspider actually interacts with your website in different situations. This will help you clearly understand its role in accessing, crawling, and processing your pages, so you can improve access, crawling, and overall Baidu mobile SEO performance.

What Is Baiduspider?

So, what exactly is Baiduspider?

Baiduspider is the crawler used by the Baidu search engine. It visits webpages on the internet, gathers information, and adds it to Baidu’s index so users can find your content when they search.

How to Identify Baiduspider?

So how do you actually know whether the crawler visiting your site is really Baiduspider?

There are a couple of simple ways to check.

Method 1: Check the User-Agent (UA)

One of the most common ways is to look at the User-Agent (UA) string.

Baiduspider uses different UA formats depending on the device, such as mobile, desktop (PC), or mini programs. That means you’ll see slightly different UA strings in your server logs, but they all follow Baidu’s crawler patterns.

Here are the main UA formats you should look out for:

Mobile UA：

Mozilla/5.0 (Linux;u;Android 4.2.2;zh-cn;) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML,like Gecko)Version/5.1 Mobile Safari/10600.6.3 (compatible; Baiduspider/2.0;+http://www.baidu.com/search/spider.html)

Or

Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone;CPU iPhone OS 9_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/601.1.46 (KHTML, like Gecko)Version/9.0 Mobile/13B143 Safari/601.1 (compatible; Baiduspider-render/2.0;+http://www.baidu.com/search/spider.html)

PC UA：

Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Baiduspider/2.0; +http://www.baidu.com/search/spider.html)

Or

Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Baiduspider-render/2.0; +http://www.baidu.com/search/spider.html)

Mini Program UA：

Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone;CPU iPhone OS 9_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/601.1.46 (KHTML, like Gecko)Version/9.0 Mobile/13B143 Safari/601.1 (compatible; Baiduspider-render/2.0;Smartapp; +http://www.baidu.com/search/spider.html)

Method 2: Reverse DNS Verification

Step 1: Perform a reverse DNS lookup

If you want to make sure that the request is really coming from Baiduspider, you can verify it using a reverse DNS lookup.

This method sounds a bit technical, but the idea is actually quite simple: you’re just checking whether the IP address in your server logs truly belongs to Baidu’s crawler.

Here’s how you can check it depending on your system:

Linux:
You can use the host command followed by the IP address to perform a reverse lookup and see if the request comes from Baiduspider.

Windows / IBM OS/2:
You can use the nslookup IP command to reverse-resolve the IP address and check if it belongs to Baiduspider.

macOS:
You can use the dig command to run a reverse DNS lookup and confirm whether the crawl is from Baiduspider.

Step 2: DNS Lookup

Next, run a DNS lookup on the domain you got in Step 1. This means checking whether the domain resolves back to the same IP address recorded in your server logs.

If the IP addresses match, you can confirm that the spider is coming from Baiduspider. If they do not match, it is likely a fake or impersonated bot.

Fake Baiduspider Example:

Server log entry:

IP: 104.248.120.37

User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Baiduspider/2.0; +http://www.baidu.com/search/spider.html)

At first glance, it looks legitimate because the User Agent is Baiduspider and it seems correct.

Step 1: Reverse DNS lookup: Let’s run an “nslookup 104.248.120.37”

Here’s the result: 37.120.248.104.in-addr.arpa name = vmi123456.contabo.host

There’re some redflags:

Domain: contabo.host (a VPS provider)

NOT *.baidu.com

NOT *.baidu.jp

Step 2: Forward DNS check: verify whether the hostname matches the ip “nslookup vmi123456.contabo.host”

And here’s the result:

Name: vmi123456.contabo.host

Address: 104.248.120.37

This only confirms it’s not Baiduspider pattern. Even though the User-Agent says Baiduspider, the reverse DNS doesn’t end in Baidu domain, the forward DNS check doesn’t match Baidu pattern, and the ASN doesn’t belong to Baidu.

Frequently Asked Questions

Let’s go through some of the most common questions people have about Baiduspider crawling and indexing.

Will Baiduspider keep crawling my website continuously?

In most cases, yes. If your website keeps publishing or updating new content, Baiduspider will regularly come back to crawl and refresh its index. You can also check your server logs to confirm the traffic is real Baiduspider and not a fake bot.

Baiduspider is crawling my site too often and it’s putting pressure on my server. What should I do?

This may happen because your site is being updated frequently, or because of fake crawlers. If it causes server issues, you can adjust the crawl frequency in the Baidu Search Resource Platform.

How do I block Baiduspider from certain pages?

The standard way is to use your robots.txt file to control which pages Baiduspider can or cannot access.

After making changes, don’t forget to submit the update in Baidu’s “Robots” tool. Just keep in mind that changes may take some time to take effect.

How do I check or fix Baiduspider blocking issues?

If Baiduspider isn’t crawling properly, the issue usually comes from one of three areas: robots blocking, UA blocking, or IP blocking. You can check them one by one:

1. Check robots.txt: Make sure there are no rules blocking Baiduspider.
2. Check UA: Test the User-Agent using the following command: curl –head –user-agent ‘Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Baiduspider/2.0; +http://www.baidu.com/search/spider.html)’ –request GET ‘xxxxxxx’, If the response code is 200, it is normal. Any other status code usually means there’s a blocking or access issue.
3. Check IP-level blocking: Make sure your server firewall is not unintentionally blocking Baiduspider IP ranges or with rules that consider Baiduspider as bot.