Safe Official docs Search Engines

Baidu News Search

Operated by Baidu

Quick Facts

User-Agent:
Baiduspider-news
Category:
Search Engines
Operator:
Baidu
Safety:
Safe
Blocking Impact:
Low - No SEO ranking impact
SEO Impact Score:
2/10
Official docs:
help.baidu.com

Confirmed by the operator

Baidu names Baiduspider-news on its own documentation page, linked above. The token, purpose and robots.txt behaviour on this profile come from that page, re-checked on October 19, 2026.

What is Baidu News Search?

Baidu News Search is an AI search-index crawler operated by Baidu. It collects and indexes web content so it can be surfaced as citations or answers inside Baidu's AI search experience. Allowing Baidu News Search can increase your visibility in AI-powered search results, which is why most sites choose to permit it.

Baidu News Search is an AI search-index crawler operated by Baidu. It collects and indexes web content so it can be surfaced as citations or answers inside Baidu's AI search experience. Allowing Baidu News Search can increase your visibility in AI-powered search results, which is why most sites choose to permit it.
Baidu News Search uses the user-agent token Baiduspider-news. You can control it via robots.txt, meta tags (noai), or the emerging llms.txt standard. Robots.txt is voluntary; for hard enforcement, combine it with server-level IP blocking.

What happens if you block Baidu News Search?

🔶 AI Visibility Trade-off - Blocking Baidu News Search will not hurt Google or Bing rankings, but it can remove your content from AI search answers and assistant citations powered by this crawler. Block only if you have a deliberate reason.
Generally safe to allow; provides legitimate crawling value.

How to block Baidu News Search with robots.txt

<code>User-agent: Baiduspider-news</code> - Matching is case-insensitive. Robots.txt is fetched from the root of each subdomain separately.

Block completely (robots.txt)
User-agent: Baiduspider-news Disallow: /
Allow all (robots.txt)
User-agent: Baiduspider-news Allow: /
Block private only (robots.txt)
User-agent: Baiduspider-news Disallow: /private/ Disallow: /api/ Disallow: /admin/ Allow: /
Nginx server block
# Nginx: Hard-block Baidu News Search if ($http_user_agent ~* "Baiduspider-news") { return 403 "Bot blocked"; }
Apache .htaccess
# Apache: Hard-block Baidu News Search SetEnvIfNoCase User-Agent "Baiduspider-news" bad_bot Order Allow,Deny Allow from all Deny from env=bad_bot
Meta robots tag
<meta name="robots" content="noindex, nofollow">
X-Robots-Tag header
X-Robots-Tag: noindex, nofollow

Is Baidu News Search safe to allow?

Yes, Baidu News Search is a safe and legitimate crawler operated by Baidu. It follows the Robots Exclusion Protocol (RFC 9309) and can be controlled with standard robots.txt rules.
Verify by reverse-DNS lookup: legitimate Baidu News Search requests resolve to Baidu's domain.

What does Baidu News Search do?

Understanding Baidu News Search's purpose helps you decide whether to allow or block it.

  • Indexes web pages for AI-powered search answers
  • Surfaces your content as citations inside AI search results
  • Builds a knowledge index used to answer user questions
  • Allowing it can increase visibility in AI search
  • Respects robots.txt directives

Baidu News Search in context

Baidu News Search is a search engine crawler operated by Baidu. In plain terms, it builds a search or answer index. Our database files it under search engines and ranks it Tier 3, mid-priority crawlers with a clear purpose but a smaller audience. 62 of the 63 search engines in our database share this tier.

Its safety rating is safe and its blocking impact is critical. So Baidu News Search is both well behaved and costly to lose: the strongest case for allowing it. How we rate safety and impact.

How site owners treat Baidu News Search

Our robots.txt study of the Tranco top 10,000 did not track Baiduspider-news as a named token, so we do not publish an adoption figure for it. If you run a large site, your own logs are the best evidence of how often it visits.

Does it follow robots.txt?

Baidu News Search's operator does not clearly document how it treats robots.txt. Write the Baidu News Search rule anyway, then confirm in your logs that its requests stop.

Baidu crawlers and close alternatives

Baidu News Search is one of 10 Baidu crawlers in our database. A User-agent: Baiduspider-news group controls Baidu News Search only; the other Baidu tokens below need their own lines.

  • Baiduspider-news: this crawler (Tier 3)
  • baidu: baidu, builds a search or answer index (Tier 3)
  • Baiduspider: Baidu Search, builds a search or answer index (Tier 3)
  • Baiduspider-ads: Baidu Business Search, checks pages for an SEO, uptime or analytics service (Tier 3)
  • Baiduspider-cpro: Baidu Union, checks pages for an SEO, uptime or analytics service (Tier 3)
  • Baiduspider-favo: Baidu Bookmark, builds a search or answer index (Tier 3)
  • Baiduspider-image: Baidu Image Search, builds a search or answer index (Tier 3)
  • Baiduspider-video: Baidu Video Search, builds a search or answer index (Tier 3)
  • ERNIEBot: ERNIE (Baidu), collects pages to train AI models (Tier 2)

To give Baidu News Search the same answer as its siblings, stack User-agent: Baiduspider-news with their lines above one set of rules; to treat Baidu News Search differently, give it its own group.

Other search engines that do the same job (builds a search or answer index) include Amzn-SearchBot from Amazon, Applebot from Apple, bingbot from Microsoft, BingPreview from Microsoft, BingVideoPreview from Microsoft, DuckDuckBot from DuckDuckGo. Deciding about Baidu News Search is usually a decision about the whole group, so check how your file treats these too.

We first recorded Baiduspider-news on September 22, 2026. Baidu documents it on help.baidu.com, and we recheck that page before each release.

Which rule Baidu News Search actually follows

Baidu News Search reads exactly one group in robots.txt, the most specific one that names Baiduspider-news, and never combines rules across groups. This short file shows the trap:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /private/

User-agent: Baiduspider-news
Disallow: /drafts/
  1. Find the group. Baidu News Search looks for a group naming Baiduspider-news. One exists, so it ignores User-agent: * completely.
  2. Apply only that group. It is refused /drafts/ and nothing else.
  3. The surprise. /private/ is open to Baidu News Search, because that rule lives in the * group it no longer reads. To keep it out of both, repeat Disallow: /private/ inside its own group.
Test yourself: does a rule under User-agent: * apply to Baidu News Search if the file also has a User-agent: Baiduspider-news group?

No. Once a group names it, Baidu News Search reads only that group. Put every rule you want it to follow inside its own group.

Test yourself: will blocking Baidu News Search remove your pages from AI answers?

Often, yes. Baidu News Search is a search engine crawler, so pages it cannot fetch can drop out of the answers or results it supports.

Test yourself: is User-agent: baiduspider-news the same as User-agent: Baiduspider-news?

Yes. RFC 9309 makes user-agent matching case-insensitive. Paths are a different story: Disallow: /Blog/ does not block /blog/.

Should you allow Baidu News Search? Decide by situation

Recommended setting for Baidu News Search by type of site
If you are...Recommended setting
You publish content and want AI answers to cite itAllow it. It is how this search engine finds your pages.
You license content and want to stop AI trainingBlocking it does not stop training, because Baidu News Search is a search engine crawler. Block the operator's training crawler instead.
You run an online shopAllow it unless it is overloading your servers.
Your server is under load from botsRate-limit before blocking. It is rated safe in our database.

Check Baidu News Search on your own site

  1. Open /robots.txt on your domain and search for Baiduspider-news. If it is not named, it follows User-agent: *.
  2. List the Disallow lines in the group Baidu News Search follows and test your key URLs against them; the longest match wins, and Allow wins a tie.
  3. Look beyond the file. A firewall or bot manager can refuse Baidu News Search even when robots.txt allows it, and that never shows in the file.
  4. Run our AI search visibility check to see how Baidu News Search and every other crawler we track are treated in one pass, including firewall refusals.

Common mistakes with Baidu News Search

The errors we see most often with Baidu News Search in the files and firewalls we test:

  1. Blocking Baidu News Search to save bandwidth and then wondering why pages drop out of that search engine. Use crawl-rate settings or caching first.
  2. Writing a User-agent: Baiduspider-news group to add one rule for Baidu News Search and accidentally dropping every rule it used to follow under User-agent: *.
  3. Disallowing CSS and JavaScript folders, which can stop Baidu News Search rendering your pages properly.

All three hide inside a file that looks correct, so check Baidu News Search from outside after every change.

Spotting Baidu News Search in your logs

robots.txt says what Baidu News Search may do; your access logs show what it actually did.

Count requests

On a server with standard Nginx or Apache logs, this counts matching requests per day (adjust the log path for your host):

grep -iE "Baiduspider-news" /var/log/nginx/access.log \
  | awk '{print $4}' | cut -d: -f1 | sort | uniq -c

And this shows which paths it requested most, which is the quickest way to see whether your Disallow lines are being respected:

grep -iE "Baiduspider-news" /var/log/nginx/access.log \
  | awk '{print $7}' | sort | uniq -c | sort -rn | head -20

Check the requests are genuine

Anyone can send the Baidu News Search user-agent, so confirm the source before acting on a match:

  • Baiduspider-news: we hold no published IP list, so use reverse DNS where the operator documents a hostname and treat an unverifiable Baidu News Search request with caution.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the official user-agent string for Baidu News Search?
The official user-agent string for Baidu News Search is: Baiduspider-news. Use this exact string in robots.txt, Nginx, Apache, or Cloudflare firewall rules to target this bot. Matching in robots.txt is case-insensitive. Verify a request genuinely comes from Baidu News Search by performing a reverse-DNS lookup on the source IP.
Is Baidu News Search safe?
Yes, Baidu News Search is a safe and legitimate crawler operated by Baidu. It follows the Robots Exclusion Protocol (RFC 9309) and can be controlled with standard robots.txt rules.
Will blocking Baidu News Search hurt my SEO?
🔶 AI Visibility Trade-off - Blocking Baidu News Search will not hurt Google or Bing rankings, but it can remove your content from AI search answers and assistant citations powered by this crawler. Block only if you have a deliberate reason.
How do I block Baidu News Search in robots.txt?
Add the following lines to your /robots.txt file:
User-agent: Baiduspider-news
Disallow: /

This instructs Baidu News Search not to crawl any path on your site. To block only specific sections, replace / with the path (e.g., Disallow: /blog/).
Does Baidu News Search respect robots.txt?
Baidu News Search is operated by Baidu and is expected to fetch and parse /robots.txt before crawling, following RFC 9309. For hard enforcement, combine robots.txt with server-level IP or user-agent blocking.
How do I verify if Baidu News Search is crawling my site?
Search your web server access logs for the string Baiduspider-news (case-insensitive: grep -i "Baiduspider-news" /var/log/nginx/access.log). Filter by user-agent in your log analytics tool (GoAccess, AWStats, etc.).

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