Locale: en
When traffic from China starts appearing, one question tends to arrive immediately:
“What search engine do people use there again? Wasn’t there some Chinese Bing-like thing with a webmaster registration page?”
Yes. Baidu.
It is not literally “China’s Bing,” of course. Baidu operates one of China’s major search engines, and it has an official webmaster platform called Baidu Search Resource Platform, or 百度搜索资源平台.
Then comes the next trap.
“But I already submitted a sitemap to Google Search Console. I already have a global sitemap. Doesn’t China just pick it up?”
Half right.
A sitemap file can often be reused across search engines. But the act of telling each search engine, “This is my site; please crawl this sitemap,” is separate.
Google, Bing, Naver, and Baidu do not share one global inbox.
You created a world sitemap. Congratulations, world domination complete.
Not quite.
You made the map. You still need to hand it to each gatekeeper.
This guide walks through Baidu site registration, ownership verification, sitemap submission, API push, and crawl diagnostics, based on Baidu’s official documentation checked as of October 2026.
1. Baidu has its own webmaster platform
Baidu Search Resource Platform is roughly comparable to Google Search Console.
Baidu’s official guidance says the basic setup is:
- Sign in with a Baidu account
- Add the website
- Verify ownership
- Use the resource submission tools
After verification, the “普通收录” area provides three major submission methods:
- API提交: push URLs by API
- Sitemap: submit a sitemap file
- 手动提交: manually submit URLs
So if you did this for Google, the China-facing version is: do the equivalent setup with Baidu too.
Search engines are not a federal bureaucracy. A form filed at Google does not automatically get forwarded to Baidu.
2. Do you need a separate “China sitemap”?
Usually, no.
If you already have a sitemap containing your public URLs, it may be usable for Baidu.
But Baidu has one very important trap: sitemap index files.
Baidu’s current manual says its sitemap submission feature no longer processes index-style sitemap files.
An index sitemap looks like this:
<sitemapindex>
<sitemap>...</sitemap>
<sitemap>...</sitemap>
</sitemapindex>
Instead of listing page URLs directly, it lists other sitemap files.
Google commonly supports this architecture for large sites.
Baidu’s ordinary sitemap submission, however, expects files that directly list URLs, such as:
<urlset>
<url><loc>https://example.com/page-1</loc></url>
<url><loc>https://example.com/page-2</loc></url>
</urlset>
A plain-text file with one URL per line is also supported.
The practical decision is simple:
- Existing sitemap is urlset → it may be reusable
- Existing sitemap is sitemapindex → keep the Google version intact and add a Baidu-specific direct-URL sitemap
Do not “fix Baidu” by breaking a sitemap that is already working elsewhere.
Add an adapter, not a demolition crew.
3. How to add a site to Baidu
The entry point is 百度搜索资源平台.
After login, Baidu’s official documentation points users through 用户中心 → 站点管理 → 添加网站.
For an HTTPS site, enter the real accessible address including the protocol:
https://example.com/
Then complete the requested site information and continue to ownership verification.
Interface labels may move over time, but the overall flow remains site registration → verification → resource submission.
One extra consideration: Baidu announced in 2023 that non-real-name accounts and low-quality sites could have sitemap submission disabled or API quotas adjusted.
So if the current interface asks for identity or entity verification, that is not necessarily a bug. It may be part of the platform’s current anti-abuse controls.
Chinese SEO can acquire paperwork energy surprisingly early.
4. File verification is the clearest ownership method
Baidu’s current verification manual mainly documents:
- 文件验证: upload a verification file
- HTML标签验证: place a verification meta tag in the homepage head
CNAME verification existed historically, but Baidu announced on January 13, 2023 that new CNAME verification was suspended.
For a new site, file verification is usually straightforward:
- Choose 文件验证
- Download the Baidu verification file
- Upload it to the site root without changing its name or contents
- Open the verification URL directly in a browser
- Confirm it returns the correct content with HTTP 200
- Return to Baidu and complete verification
Example:
https://example.com/baidu_verify_xxxxx.html
The key is external accessibility, not merely “the file exists in the repository.”
CDNs, Workers, rewrites, and redirects can easily turn a perfectly committed file into a production 404.
Baidu also advises keeping the verification file or HTML tag after verification.
Passing the exam and immediately shredding the admission ticket is not a great maintenance strategy.
5. The biggest sitemap trap is the index format
After verification, go to the resource submission area and open the Sitemap section under ordinary indexing.
Baidu’s documented flow is roughly:
- Host the sitemap on your site
- Open the Sitemap tool for a verified site
- Choose 添加新数据
- Select URL列表
- Enter the sitemap URL
- Submit
Baidu’s FAQ states that sitemap data should be XML or TXT, directly contain page URLs, contain at most 50,000 URLs per file, and remain below 10 MB.
That matters for multilingual sites.
For example:
2,000 articles × 12 languages = 24,000 URLs
That is still below the 50,000-URL limit if those are the main page URLs.
If categories, tags, pagination, and derivative pages push the total above the limit, split the URLs into multiple direct-URL sitemap files.
But do not recombine them into a sitemap index and expect Baidu’s ordinary submission tool to accept it.
That would be walking out of the trap and immediately stepping back into it.
6. Pair the sitemap with API submission for frequently published content
Baidu describes API submission as the fastest of its ordinary submission methods.
The roles are different:
Full inventory → Sitemap
New URLs → API
For a site that publishes frequently, using both is sensible.
The API submission page exposes a site-specific endpoint and token. Baidu’s examples use a format similar to:
http://data.zz.baidu.com/urls?site=example.com&token=YOUR_TOKEN
The request body contains one URL per line.
Treat the token as a secret.
Do not paste it into public Markdown, source code, screenshots, or articles. Store it in an environment secret or secret manager.
A robust publication flow looks like:
Generate content
→ quality checks
→ publish to production
→ verify the production URL returns 200
→ submit that URL to Baidu API
→ record the result
Do not submit a URL first and publish later.
Telling the crawler “grand opening today!” and sending it to an empty lot is unnecessary.
7. Check whether Cloudflare or bot protection is punching Baiduspider in the face
Submitting a sitemap is useless if Baiduspider cannot fetch the pages.
Baidu’s crawl-error documentation lists problems such as:
- DNS failures
- connection timeout
- download timeout
- connection refusal
- HTTP 403
- HTTP 404
- HTTP 5xx
Sites using aggressive WAF or bot protection should pay particular attention to 403 responses.
“We blocked the bots.” “We blocked the search bots too.” “Why is search traffic gone?”
A flawless fortress. No enemies. No visitors.
That does not mean blindly trusting every request whose User-Agent says Baiduspider. Instead, use Baidu’s crawl diagnostics and error reports to confirm whether the real crawler can retrieve required pages successfully.
8. Overseas hosting is not automatically disqualified, but China-side reachability matters
Baidu’s own SEO guidance says it does not discriminate against a Chinese-language site simply because the server is overseas.
However, Baiduspider operates from China. If ordinary users in China cannot reliably access a site, the crawler may have the same problem.
So:
Overseas hosting ≠ automatic failure.
But:
Fast everywhere except China, where everything times out = a real problem.
If China traffic matters, check not only sitemap submission but also China-side latency, HTML availability, and whether essential resources fail to load.
Sometimes “Baidu ignored my submission” is actually “the crawler could not reach the site.”
9. Submission success is not indexing success
Baidu’s link-submission page explicitly states that submission helps shorten the time required for crawlers to discover URLs, but does not guarantee indexing.
Keep these states separate:
API accepted ≠ crawl succeeded ≠ indexed ≠ ranked ≠ China traffic exploded
Sitemap and API are discovery channels.
After discovery, normal search quality still matters:
- readable Simplified Chinese content
- title and page content that actually match
- no thin mass-generated pages
- meaningful internal links
- stable page delivery
- mobile readability
- accessibility from China
- avoidance of massive duplicate content
Baidu’s low-quality content documentation explicitly calls out garbled text, unnatural wording, duplicate/spliced content, unrelated material, and poor presentation.
For a 12-language site, creating 12 URLs is not the same thing as producing 12 useful local-language pages.
Readers can usually tell when internationalization means “we pressed translate twelve times.”
10. The clean production architecture: Sitemap as baseline, API as delta
The stable design is:
All published URLs
↓
Baidu-compatible direct-URL sitemap
↓
Register it in Baidu Search Resource Platform
And separately:
New article goes live
↓
Production returns 200
↓
Push the new URL through Baidu API
↓
Record success or failure
Sitemap is the baseline. API is the breaking-news desk.
If your existing Google, Bing, or Naver sitemap setup is healthy, do not break it just to satisfy Baidu’s different sitemap behavior.
When one search engine has a special requirement, add a search-engine-specific adapter.
Different doors, different keys.
11. One-time setup checklist
For the first setup, do this:
- Sign in to Baidu Search Resource Platform
- Add the site
- Verify ownership by file or HTML tag
- Keep the verification artifact
- Check whether the current sitemap is urlset or sitemapindex
- Reuse it if it directly lists URLs
- Create a Baidu-specific direct-URL sitemap if it is an index
- Submit the sitemap under ordinary indexing
- Store the API token as a secret
- Push only production URLs already verified as 200
- Review crawl diagnostics for 403, 404, 5xx, and timeouts
- Never confuse “submitted” with “indexed”
At that point, you can fairly say the China-facing search discovery pipeline exists.
12. So what actually needs to be done?
If traffic from China is already appearing, ignoring Baidu makes little sense.
The work itself is not glamorous:
Register the site. Verify ownership. Submit the sitemap. Push new URLs through the API. Confirm Baiduspider can fetch them.
That is it.
The biggest conceptual mistake is assuming that “I already built a global sitemap” means “I already submitted it to every search engine on Earth.”
A sitemap is a map. Submission is delivery.
Making the map and leaving it on your desk does not mean Baidu received it.
Take the map to Baidu’s front desk.
And once you are there, set up API express delivery for new pages too.
References (10)
- Baidu Search Resource Platform, “搜索资源平台使用指南” https://ziyuan.baidu.com/college/articleinfo/?id=3329
- Baidu Search Resource Platform, “平台工具使用手册：网站验证” https://ziyuan.baidu.com/college/articleinfo?id=267&page=1
- Baidu Search Resource Platform, “站点验证暂停CNAME验证的通知” https://ziyuan.baidu.com/wiki/3462
- Baidu Search Resource Platform, “平台工具使用手册：Sitemap” https://ziyuan.baidu.com/college/articleinfo?id=267&page=2
- Baidu Search Resource Platform, “资源提交工具常见问题解析” https://ziyuan.baidu.com/college/articleinfo?id=3217
- Baidu Search Resource Platform, “链接提交” https://ziyuan.baidu.com/linksubmit/url/
- Baidu Search Resource Platform, “抓取异常” https://ziyuan.baidu.com/college/articleinfo?id=277
- Baidu Search Resource Platform, “百度搜索引擎优化指南2.0” https://ziyuan.baidu.com/college/articleinfo?id=1349
- Baidu Search Resource Platform, “关于回收网站提交配额的通知” https://ziyuan.baidu.com/college/articleinfo?id=3531
- Baidu Search Resource Platform, “百度搜索违规低质页面问题说明” https://ziyuan.baidu.com/college/articleinfo?id=3528
