How do you check which pages Baidu has indexed?

Checking Baidu is easy to do badly. The number you see first is an estimate, and the tool that replaces it sits behind an account you may not have.

This guide shows which check answers which question, and where the evidence stops. It’s part of our Baidu SEO guide.

Which check should you use?

Use site: for a first look, a full URL search for one page, and index volume for the count. Each method answers a different question.

Method	Account needed?	What it tells you	Main limit
site:yourdomain.com	No	Whether pages show, roughly how many	Estimate 12
Full URL search	No	Whether one page shows	No official rule found
索引量 (index volume)	Yes	The reference count, by site or folder	Delayed, no URL list described 1
流量与关键词 hot pages	Yes	Pages that earn the most clicks	Click-earning pages only 9
抓取诊断 (crawl diagnosis)	Yes	What Baiduspider receives	Crawl, not index 8
Server logs	No	Whether Baiduspider visited	Crawl, not index

What’s the quickest way to check your whole site?

Search site: by hand on Baidu. It tells you whether anything shows, and nothing more precise than that.

1. Open baidu.com in a normal browser. Do this by hand, because it lets you read the results yourself rather than trust a parser.
2. Search the exact host. Try site:www.yourdomain.com. Baidu’s examples use the full host.⁶
3. Repeat for other hosts. Check your root domain and any subdomain, such as cn. or m.
4. Test mobile. Run a mobile host on m.baidu.com, as Baidu’s example does.⁶
5. Save a dated screenshot. You’ll want it for comparison.

Don’t read the total as a count. Baidu’s manual says the figure is an estimate and fairly inaccurate.¹ Its 2012 syntax page adds that the result count can fall while indexed pages rise.²

How do you check one specific page?

Paste the full URL into Baidu’s search box. If the page appears as a result, it’s indexed.

We found no official Baidu tool that gives a yes or no for a single URL, so this is a practical test rather than a rule.

Developers have used the same test for years. A 2014 script searches the URL and looks for Baidu’s “no results” text,²³ and a 2021 script searches the URL and looks for a “submit URL” prompt.¹⁸

Both depend on wording that Baidu can change. Treat a found page as good evidence, and a missing one as weak evidence.

Baidu’s site: page shows the operator with a host and doesn’t mention paths.² So site:yourdomain.com/page/ may work, but we can’t confirm it from Baidu’s documentation.

If you have an account, there’s a stronger clue. Baidu’s 2020 manual says the 流量与关键词 (traffic and keywords) tool lists up to 50,000 hot pages, the URLs that earn the most clicks from Baidu search.⁹

How do you get the reference count?

Use 索引量, the index volume tool. Baidu says its figures are the reference, and site: is only an estimate.¹

You need a verified site. See how to set up Baidu Webmaster Tools first.

1. Log in to ziyuan.baidu.com, Baidu’s Search Resource Platform.
2. Pick your site. Verify the main domain, because a verified subdomain alone won’t show main-domain data.¹
3. Open 索引量. Baidu’s 2021 guide places it under 数据统计, then 站点资源.⁷ Labels may have moved since, and our English guide to the menus can help.
4. Add folder rules for the sections you care about.¹
5. Read the trend. Daily data covers the past year, and older data is monthly.¹

Rules use * as a wildcard. Placed at the end, it matches anything, slashes included. Elsewhere, it stops at a slash.¹

Rule (Baidu’s pattern, on an example domain)	Counts
http://*.example.com/*	The domain and all subdomains
http://cn.example.com/*	One subdomain, with all subfolders
http://cn.example.com/blog/*	The blog folder, with subfolders
http://cn.example.com/blog/*/	The blog folder only
http://cn.example.com/blog*/*	Every folder starting with “blog”

Build one rule for each translated section. It shows you where Baidu has taken pages, and a sitewide total can’t do that.

The data lags too. It refreshes daily at best and weekly at worst, and the timing varies by site.¹

No account? Baidu’s help contradicts itself on foreign numbers. A mainland Chinese number is the safe route, and EU numbers are excluded.¹⁶²⁴

See the phone number problem.

Don’t borrow an identity to get around it. A September 2023 notice says Baidu removed verification from risky sites, such as those on accounts without real-name authentication. That affects tools, not discovery or ranking.¹⁷

Without an account, you’re left with site:, URL searches and your logs. That tells you whether pages show, not how many.

What does “indexed” actually mean at Baidu?

Baidu describes two stages, and the English guides we read don’t separate them. In 2018 it said a page has to pass the first to reach the second.⁴

Chinese term	Baidu’s meaning	Can you measure it?
收录 (shoulu)	Baiduspider found and analyzed the page	No Baidu tool. The 2018 article says to estimate it from logs 4
索引 (suoyin)	Baidu judged it useful and added it to its database	Yes, and the same article says only index volume gives the real count 14

Baidu doesn’t keep its own terms apart. Its 2018 article on differences describes index volume as pages “收录” by the search engine.⁵ In practice, read “indexed” as “can appear in results”.

Even then, an indexed page isn’t guaranteed visibility. Baidu says index volume has several levels, and pages in lower levels get little exposure.¹¹¹

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Why don’t site: and index volume match?

Mostly because they measure different moments and different result sets. Baidu’s 2018 explanation lists these causes.⁵

What you see	Cause Baidu gives
Index volume higher	Pages blocked today, such as delisted products or dead links, still count in yesterday’s data
Index volume higher	301 or 302 redirects, because results drop duplicates
Index volume higher	Mobile-adapted URLs only show in mobile search
site: higher	URLs created today aren’t in yesterday’s data yet

The same article defines index volume as including subdomains, such as a bbs. host. It doesn’t list that as a cause, but compare the same scope in both checks.

One date needs care. A February 2017 notice said the two figures now match,⁶ and the 2018 article ends by saying the mismatch has been addressed.⁵ The 2020 manual still calls site: an estimate,¹ so we follow the later text and treat the table as possible causes.

What can crawl data tell you?

It tells you Baidu visited, not that Baidu kept the page. Use it to rule out access problems.

Tool or source	What it shows	Worth knowing
抓取诊断	What Baiduspider sees on a URL	70 uses per site per week, first 200 KB 8
抓取频次	How often Baidu crawls you	Listed in the same menu 7
抓取异常	Crawl errors	Listed in the same menu 7
Server logs	Baiduspider requests	Check the host, as below

Older figures circulate. Dragon Metrics reported 200 fetches a week in 2017,¹⁵ and Baidu’s tool page now says 70.⁸

To confirm a log entry, run a reverse lookup on the IP. Baidu says real hosts end in .baidu.com or .baidu.jp, and any other host is fake.¹²

For more on that case, see whether Baidu indexes foreign websites.

Can you trust third-party index checkers?

Be skeptical. Baidu’s 2018 article calls any third-party 收录 lookup unreliable.⁴ That statement is old and specific to 收录, but we found nothing that replaces it.

The tools don’t help much on method either:

• Chinafy’s free test compares indexed pages across engines, and its page doesn’t explain how it measures them.¹⁹
• Tianapi’s API returns a count by domain, without describing its source or accuracy.²²
• Published scripts read Baidu’s results page, and the 2021 one sends spoofed IP headers.¹⁸

Use these for a rough signal at most, and never as the number in a report.

What should you do with the result?

Read index data alongside traffic, not on its own. Baidu’s manual says index volume going up or down doesn’t tell you what traffic will do.¹

What you find	Likely reading	Next step
Nothing shows	Not indexed, or not yet	Why your site isn’t showing
Crawled, not indexed	Access is fine, so look at the page	Check quality and duplicates 10
Only some sections show	Baidu has taken part of the site	Compare folder rules, then submit the rest
Small swing, steady traffic	Normal	Nothing. Swings of 10% or more can be normal 1
Index and traffic both move over 20%	Worth investigating, per Baidu in 2018	Baidu’s feedback center can help look into it 5
Indexed, no traffic	Visibility issue, not indexing	Track your rankings

1. 1site: on the exact host
2. 2Full URL search
3. 3索引量 with folder-level rules
4. 4Hot pages in 流量与关键词
5. 5抓取诊断 if a page is missing

Baidu also says there’s no need to watch the number every day. It’s one place to look when traffic changes sharply.¹

Baidu gives no indexing deadline of its own,¹⁰ so don’t assume a page is lost after a set period. See how long Baidu takes for what’s known.

The bottom line

If you remember one thing, use site: to see whether anything shows, and index volume to count. Neither one proves a single URL, so search for your important pages by hand.

Skip October 14 to 23, 2026 in your data, and read every index figure next to your traffic.

How Index in China can help

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We commit to a set number of indexed pages and to reporting. We don’t guarantee traffic. See what we do.

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