01 · Operator
Who operates Baiduspider
02 · Behavior
What Baiduspider does
Baiduspider fetches pages to build the index for Baidu web search. Baidu also runs a rendering variant, Baiduspider-render, that identifies itself with its own token. Both variants contain the string Baiduspider in the user agent.
03 · Impact
Why Baiduspider matters for your site
If you allow it
- Your pages can appear in Baidu search results
- Needed for visibility with Chinese-speaking audiences
If you block it
- Little value if you have no audience in China
- User agent is often spoofed by other clients
04 · Allow
How to allow Baiduspider
robots.txt
User-agent: Baiduspider
Allow: /Cloudflare
# Security › WAF › Custom rules › Create rule
Expression: (http.user_agent contains "Baiduspider")
Action: Skip › All Super Bot Fight Mode rules
# Also check Security › Bots: "Block AI bots" can block it regardless of robots.txt.WordPress
# WordPress serves a virtual robots.txt. Edit it with your SEO plugin:
# Yoast: SEO › Tools › File editor · Rank Math: General Settings › Edit robots.txt
User-agent: Baiduspider
Allow: /nginx
# nginx serves every user agent by default.
# Make sure no rule like this blocks it:
# if ($http_user_agent ~* "Baiduspider") { return 403; }Apache
# Apache serves every user agent by default.
# Make sure .htaccess has no rule like this:
# RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} Baiduspider [NC]
# RewriteRule .* - [F,L]05 · Block
How to block Baiduspider
Start with robots.txt. If Baiduspider keeps showing up in your logs, block it at your CDN or web server.
robots.txt
User-agent: Baiduspider
Disallow: /Cloudflare
# Security › WAF › Custom rules › Create rule
Expression: (http.user_agent contains "Baiduspider")
Action: BlockWordPress
# WordPress serves a virtual robots.txt. Edit it with your SEO plugin:
# Yoast: SEO › Tools › File editor · Rank Math: General Settings › Edit robots.txt
User-agent: Baiduspider
Disallow: /nginx
# In your server { } block:
if ($http_user_agent ~* "Baiduspider") {
return 403;
}Apache
# .htaccess
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} Baiduspider [NC]
RewriteRule .* - [F,L]
</IfModule>06 · User agents
User agents we see for Baiduspider
The user agent published by the operator:
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)07 · Verification
Is it really Baiduspider?
Baiduspider’s operator publishes no IP ranges or hostnames, so requests cannot be verified. Treat the user agent as a claim, and watch your logs for unusual request rates.
FAQ
Questions about Baiduspider
What is Baiduspider?
Baiduspider is the crawler that Baidu uses to index pages for its search engine.
What is Baiduspider-render?
It is a Baidu crawler variant whose user agent contains Baiduspider-render/2.0. A robots.txt rule for Baiduspider also matches it by name.
How do I block Baiduspider?
Add a robots.txt group with User-agent: Baiduspider followed by Disallow: /.
Last reviewed Oct 7, 2026