Do backlinks still matter for Baidu, and where should they come from?

Most advice on Baidu links comes from agencies, and much of it can’t be traced to anything Baidu wrote. So this guide starts with Baidu’s own texts, gives their dates, and says where they stop.

It’s part of our guide to Baidu SEO. Links are one piece of the plan. For the rest, see how to rank on Baidu from outside China.

Do backlinks still matter on Baidu?

Yes. Baidu calls links the most important route for finding pages, though it says they count less as votes than they used to, and that brand counts for far more.¹

That Baidu article was published in 2017, and its link section is labeled as a 2014 version. It’s old, but Baidu’s 2019 guidance repeats the lower reliance, and we found nothing newer that replaces it.²

Baidu went further in August 2015. It said it trusts only a very small range of good, important links, and that some links from important, relevant sites are enough. It then told sites to stop wasting time and money on links.²²

Source	What it says	Limit
Baidu, 2017 1	Less reliance on links, no less detection. Good links are still welcome	No weights given
Baidu, Aug. 2015 22	Only a very small range of good links is trusted	Old, and no list of which links
Searchmetrics, Nov. 2020 10	0.9 correlation with rankings, median of 76,250 backlinks in the top 10	Baidu’s own sites excluded, study seen only through press coverage
Pentzek, Dec. 2023 11	More referring domains and better link quality go with better positions	Correlation, on 10,000 keywords
Marketing to China, updated July 2026 16	Links are secondary to relevance and user behavior	Agency view, no link data

In the 2023 study, the 50 lowest-ranked domains, a group the article doesn’t define, averaged about one linking domain each.¹¹

A correlation doesn’t show that links cause rankings. Strong brands attract links too. Nanjing Marketing Group, writing about the 2020 study, advised against focusing too much on the scores.²⁷

Sources also clash on quantity. An article cowritten by Marcus Pentzek, updated in November 2020, says quantity still often beats quality on Baidu.¹²

That same month, Searchmetrics quoted him saying Baidu used to be easy to manipulate, and that it now detects spammy links far better. He also said a large number of links from good sites matters.¹⁰

That doesn’t fully match Baidu’s “some links are enough.” Go with the more cautious reading: quality first, and no bought volume.

Links are one factor among many. See Baidu ranking factors for the full picture.

What makes a good link in Baidu’s eyes?

A good link is a real recommendation from a site on your topic. Baidu says links should be a relatively high-quality recommendation,¹³ and that search engines treat each outbound link as a vote.²

Baidu’s guidance gives you these pointers:

• Same topic. Links between sites on the same subject are treated as friendlier.²
• Four grades. It sorts links into high-quality, normal, garbage and cheating. We didn’t find a full list of criteria.¹²
• Clear anchor text. Anchor text helps it judge a page, alongside the title and headings.¹
• Image links. alt and title attributes do the same job for image links.¹

The clearest test comes from a Baidu text that Dragon Metrics translated in 2013: is this a true, honest and intentional recommendation?¹³

That page no longer opens on Baidu’s site, so we can’t check the translation against the original.

The same text separated two groups.¹³ Garbage links aren’t built by you, and Baidu said it filtered about 98% of them without penalty.

Link spam is built on purpose, and the site it benefits gets penalized.

Do Chinese links count more than foreign ones?

Agencies say yes, but Baidu hasn’t. We found no Baidu text favoring .cn or Chinese links. It talks about topic, not country.²

Claim	Who says it	Evidence given
In-country signals get more weight, and one Chinese news link can beat many foreign ones	SEO Sherpa, 2026 15	None
Chinese domains and platforms weigh far more	Marketing to China, 2026 17	None
Links on non-Chinese sites may not even be discovered, because Baidu crawls them less	Dragon Metrics, 2017 14	None
Links from authoritative Chinese sources improve visibility and domain authority	Ranktracker, 2025 18	None

There’s a simple reason to prefer Chinese links without taking any of this on faith. They’re on your topic for your readers, and those readers can click them.

One personal account points the same way, for a single site. Silas Brown reported that a Chinese page got listed after a mention on a scraped copy of a Weibo forum. He guessed, without proof, that Baidu listed pages one hop from big Chinese sites but not two.²⁰

For the domain side of this, see do you need a .cn domain.

What gets you penalized?

Buying or selling links, using link brokers, and placing promotional articles at scale. Baidu has said so in writing, and it hits both sides of the deal.

Rule	Date	Targets	Consequence
Luluo 3	Feb. 2013	Link brokers, sites selling links, sites buying links	Links dropped from the calculation, then action against the site
Luluo 2.0 41	July 2013	Promotional articles, known as 软文, and the sites that carry them	A few: links filtered. Many: site demoted or blocked. Hosts demoted and removed from Baidu’s news sources. Trading platforms blocked
Jinglei 2.0 5	May 2018, text updated June 2020	Links made to cheat, and fake clicks	Limited display, links cleaned, record in site history, permanent ban if serious

Guides also call Luluo Green Radish or Money Plant.¹²¹⁵ Those are English names for the same algorithm, 绿萝.

Jinglei 3.0, from January 2021, covers faked user behavior and doesn’t mention links.²⁵ Baidu’s notices list later upgrades, such as Qingfeng 4.0 on downloads, but we saw none whose title concerns links.²⁶ That doesn’t mean the old ones stopped.

Paid distribution is a real product. One newswire advertised guaranteed postings across 300 media partners in 2023, including Sohu and Sina, and said nothing about links.¹⁹

Press coverage isn’t the problem. A release sent for readers is different from a package bought for links.

Before you buy, ask whether those pages carry links, and ask a local adviser about advertising rules.

If you do pay for a placement, Baidu’s advice is plain: use nofollow on advertising links.² Baidu says it can go directly on one link, as rel="nofollow".⁹

Free check

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Where can a foreign company get real links?

Start with people who already know you. A foreign company has few contacts in Chinese media, but it often has partners, and those links are easy to justify.

Source	Suggested by	Watch out
Distributors and local partners	SEO Sherpa 15	Link to a useful Chinese page, not only your homepage
Trade media, earned coverage	SEO Sherpa, Ranktracker 1518	Editorial only. Promotional articles fall under Luluo 2.0 4
Trade associations and event sites	Baidu’s same-topic principle 2	Our reading, not a Baidu recommendation
Chinese business directories	SEO Sherpa, Ranktracker 1518	Baidu warns against groups of unrelated low-quality sites 2
Zhihu and Baidu Zhidao	SEO Sherpa 15	Baidu has removed link functions on its own platforms before 12
Baidu Baike	LinkResearchTools, Marketing to China 1216	Your own site doesn’t count as a reference for commercial facts 21
Tieba	LinkResearchTools 12	The same article says admins may delete threads reported as advertising

Treat Baike and Tieba as presence, not link sources, since we found no measurement of any link value. See Baidu Baike, Tieba and Baidu’s own results.

These steps draw on Dragon Metrics’ 2017 guide, the most detailed one we read. Check the channels against current habits.¹⁴

1. List your existing ties. Partners, suppliers, customers in China, associations and events you’ve attended.
2. Give them a page worth linking. It needs to be in Simplified Chinese and useful to their readers.
3. Look at who links to rivals. Sites that link to Chinese competitors are your best prospects.
4. Find a contact. Search a site with site: plus words like 投稿 (submissions), 合作 (partnerships) or 联系 (contact).
5. Pick the channel. Dragon Metrics suggested email for larger firms, QQ for smaller ones and WeChat for individual site owners.
6. Build the relationship first. Its advice is not to mention links or SEO in a first contact.

You’ll likely need a Chinese speaker for this. See also how to choose a Chinese brand name, since Baidu’s point about brand starts with a name people can search.

How do you check your links without Baidu’s tool?

Use outside tools and check by hand. Baidu withdrew its link analysis tool on June 2, 2020, and we found no replacement.⁷

Third-party tools are now your main list. The 2023 study drew its link data from DataForSEO and Majestic, and SEO Sherpa says Dragon Metrics offers backlink analysis.¹¹¹⁵

We have no measure of how complete they are for Chinese sites.

For each link you earn, run four checks:

Check	How	Why
The link is in the HTML	View the page source	Baidu asks for text, not JavaScript, for important links 23
It carries no nofollow	Read the rel attribute	Baidu’s tag tells it not to follow the link 9
The linking page is on Baidu	Search site: plus its domain, or its URL	A rough check. Baidu calls these result counts estimates 24
Your target page loads in China	Test it from China	A link to a page that fails is wasted

The same logic applies to links on your own pages. See does Baidu read JavaScript.

1. Partner on your topic, in HTMLAim for
2. Media, unpaid articleAim for
3. Unrelated directoryAvoid
4. Paid article without nofollowAvoid
5. Link bought from a brokerAvoid

Can you disavow bad links?

Don’t plan on it. Baidu opened a disavow tool in 2013.⁸ A July 2015 notice removed manual rejection of spam links from its link tool.⁶ An August 2015 notice said the feature was offline and that Baidu now handles spam links automatically.²²

Its 2019 guidance still tells sites to use the tool.² That looks like old text left in place, though Baidu doesn’t say so. SEO Sherpa also says the tool has closed, without a date or source.¹⁵ Check your own account, but don’t count on finding it.

If you do find bad links you built or bought, ask the sites to remove them. Then keep a dated record of what you asked. SEO Sherpa suggests the same order: audit, request removal, improve content.¹⁵

If your pages have dropped out entirely, links may not be why. See why your site isn’t showing on Baidu.

The bottom line

Links still matter on Baidu, but Baidu says your brand matters more, and it punishes the buying that makes links look easy.

Earn a few real links from sites on your topic. Skip the packages, keep paid placements marked, and be skeptical of anyone quoting a precise value for a Chinese link.

How Index in China can help

We translate your site into Simplified Chinese with a human reviewer, handle its submission to Chinese search engines where the account allows it and send a monthly report on Chinese traffic.

That gives partners a Chinese page worth linking to. We don’t promise rankings or traffic. See what we do, or book a 30-minute call.

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