How do you optimize your site for Baidu mobile search?

Most advice on this topic is old, and part of it points to tools Baidu has since closed. The rules themselves are still findable, because Baidu wrote them down with numbers.

This guide sorts what’s still usable, with a date on each rule. It’s part of our work on Baidu SEO.

It expands the mobile step of how to rank on Baidu from outside China.

Does Baidu treat mobile search differently?

Yes. Baidu’s rule is that a mobile search result must land on a mobile page, not a PC page.³ A desktop-only site is working against that rule.

Baidu described the logic in 2015: mobile results start from PC results, then get adjusted with mobile signals, with mobile pages ranked first.¹³

Its 2014 Q&A was blunter, saying PC pages aren’t prioritized on mobile.¹⁴

The reverse also holds. Baidu says mobile pages can appear in PC search, but usually rank poorly there.¹⁵

Baidu is also far stronger on phones than on desktops, at least in StatCounter’s data.

1. Mobile · Baidu60.37%
2. Mobile · Bing7.2%
3. Desktop · Baidu29.65%
4. Desktop · Bing46.01%

StatCounter, October 2026

So Baidu led mobile at 60.37% in October 2026,¹ while Bing led desktop at 46.01%.² If your buyers search at a desk, read our guide to Bing in China too.

Which mobile setup should a foreign site choose?

Choose responsive unless you have a strong reason not to. Baidu doesn’t name a winner, but this setup removes the most work for a company outside China.⁸

Baidu lists three setups, and its 2019 comparison looks like this:⁸

	Responsive (自适应)	Dynamic serving (代码适配)	Separate mobile site (跳转适配)
Same URL	Yes	Yes	No
Same HTML	Yes	No	No
Performance	High, but pages can bloat	High	Medium, redirects add delay
Maintenance	Low	High without a CMS	Medium to high
Mapping tool	Not needed 6	No pairs, same URL	For submitting pairs 6

The last row matters most for you. Submitting pairs through Baidu’s tool means verifying your site first.⁷

That leads straight to the Baidu account and phone number problem.

A responsive site doesn’t need that tool at all.⁶

The market seems to point the same way. A 2023 study of 10,000 Chinese keywords put references to separate mobile pages at 10.3%, against 35% in a 2020 Searchmetrics study.²⁰ Those are two studies, and the article doesn’t define the measure, so read it as a rough trend.

If you go responsive

Add these two tags to your template’s <head>.⁸

<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0">
<meta name="applicable-device" content="pc,mobile">

Baidu also suggests the <picture> element for images.⁸

If you already run a separate mobile site

Keep it if it works, and follow these rules:

• Domain: use a separate host such as m.example.com, not a /m/ folder.¹⁰
• Redirects: use HTTP 301 or 302, not JavaScript.⁸
• Annotations: add rel="alternate" on the PC page, for screens up to 640px, and rel="canonical" on the mobile page.⁸
• Device tags: use pc on PC pages and mobile on mobile pages.⁸
• Content: the main content of each pair must be identical.⁶
• Consistency: tools, tags and redirects must all name the same mobile URL.¹⁵

Baidu’s mapping tool takes rules or URL pairs: 50,000 pairs per file, or 2,000 per manual entry.⁷

Its timing isn’t consistent. The manual says about 10 days of checks, and the tool page says 14.⁷⁶ The tool also doesn’t fix ranking problems.⁶

If you serve different HTML on one URL

Baidu asks for a Vary HTTP header, so caches don’t serve the wrong version. It says the header also helps its spider find your mobile content.⁸ The standard form is Vary: User-Agent.

Then set applicable-device to pc or mobile for each version.⁸

If your server detects devices

This covers both setups above, and it’s Baidu’s most recent mobile warning we found. In March 2026, it said some sites mistake HarmonyOS phones for PCs or unknown devices.²⁸

Users in the Baidu app can then get a desktop layout, tiny text or broken video.²⁸ Baidu asks site owners to check their server logs and adaptation logic, and gives a sample user agent for testing.²⁸

A responsive layout built on CSS media queries doesn’t read the user agent, so it avoids this particular trap.

What are Baidu’s rules for a mobile page?

They’re precise, and most date from 2020. The most recent list, from 2023, repeats several of them as violations, so they don’t look retired.⁵

Element	Baidu’s rule	Date
First screen	Main content at least 50% of the screen, centered 34	2020, repeated 2023 5
Layout	No sideways swiping, no cut-off content 5	2023
Body text	At least 10pt, font to line height ratio above 1.4 4	2020
Body text	14px recommended 11	2016
Tap targets	Over 40px wide and high 11	2016
Floating, pop-up, overlay ads	Not allowed anywhere 4	2020
Ads at the top of the first screen	Up to 10% of one screen 4	2020
Ads on article pages	None from title to end of text 4	2020
Ads on list pages	Under a third of each screen 4	2020
Function buttons	Up to 10% of one screen 4	2020
Consultation function	Once per page, never at the top 4	2020
“Expand full text”	Once, never on the first screen, except list pages 34	2020
Forced app download	Not allowed 3	2020
Title	17 Chinese characters before wrapping, cut after 24 19	2019
Submitted site logo	200 by 150px at 4:3, replacing 3:2 29	2025

Baidu’s 2015 launch notice promised better treatment for pages meeting its standard.¹² We found no recent statement of how much any single rule weighs.

The list also says Baidu periodically penalizes pages that break these rules, without giving a schedule.⁵

Where a Western template may clash

Baidu doesn’t discuss these elements by name, so the list below is our reading of its rules, not its text.

• Hero banners. A full-height image with a short slogan may leave too little main content on the first screen.
• Cookie banners. A large banner covers the same screen. Keep it small, and check your legal needs in our privacy law guide.
• Chat widgets. Baidu limits consultation features and function buttons,⁴ and a chat bubble on top of a sticky bar stacks both.
• Sticky bars. Baidu’s 2023 list flags two or more repeated functions on one screen that stay after scrolling.⁵

How fast does a mobile page need to be?

There’s no single answer. Each Baidu text we read gives a different number, and the latest gives none.

Year	What Baidu wrote	Measures
2016	Users expect 3 seconds, and 78% leave after 5 11	Page load
2017	Within 2 seconds gets better treatment, 3 or more gets demoted 9	First screen
2020	Should load within 1 second 4	First screen
2023	Slow loading is a violation, with no number 5	Page

The 2017 line comes from an algorithm Baidu called Lightning (闪电), launched in October 2017.⁹ We found nothing saying whether it still runs at those thresholds.

The useful detail is what gets measured: the first screen, not the full page. That’s a different target from a total load time.

Chinafy, a vendor of China website services, gives 15.3 seconds from Beijing across 614 sites in its 2025-26 benchmark. It calls that figure both a median and an average, and doesn’t date its tests.²⁵

It measures the browser’s onLoad event, so it isn’t comparable with Baidu’s first-screen numbers. Treat it as a vendor’s signal of the distance, not a benchmark.

Reaching 1 second from a server outside the mainland may not be realistic. Use it as a direction, and put what the first screen needs at the top of the page.

Our guide to speeding up your website in China covers how to test and what to fix first.

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How big can a mobile page be?

Keep the HTML source under about 128k. Baidu’s 2017 white paper says source generally shouldn’t exceed that.⁹

Its case study is a clear warning. A site embedded images as base64 ahead of its main content and reached 164k. The crawl cut off before the content, so the page was treated as empty and left out of the index.⁹

Baidu doesn’t define the “k” further, so leave a margin. Three habits help:

• No base64 images. Link image files instead of embedding them in the HTML.
• Main content high in the source. That way a cut-off doesn’t take it with it.⁹
• Scripts at the end, or async. Baidu’s advice, so they don’t block rendering.⁹

Page builders and responsive templates are the ones to check, since one HTML file has to carry every layout.

JavaScript is the related risk. Baidu says H5 pages that load content through JS are more likely to come out as empty.⁹

Its mapping tool manual also lists main content loaded through AJAX as a cause of inaccurate pairs.⁷ See does Baidu read JavaScript?

Which older advice should you ignore?

Anything that sends you to MIP or Baidu’s old mobile section. Most mobile guides predate the changes below.

Older advice	What happened	Date
Use MIP for speed 9	Cache service closed, then the platform entry. Baidu said core and components stay maintained 17	April and June 2020
Use the Mobile section (移动专区)	Closed 17	August 4, 2020
Use the Mobile section’s daily submission	Paused 17	May 18, 2020
Test with the landing page tool 22	Entry closed for upgrades, no reopening notice found 17	November 30, 2021

That log ends at the November 2021 entry, so the missing reopening notice proves little. Check inside your account.

The mobile adaptation tool survived. Baidu’s 2021 user guide lists it,¹⁸ and its page was online on November 1, 2026.⁶

Our guide to submitting your site to Baidu covers the current routes.

One older sitemap detail may still be useful. Baidu’s 2015 notice gives the mobile type values mobile, htmladapt and pc,mobile.²³ We have no recent confirmation of them.

What about transcoding?

We can’t tell you if it still happens. Baidu wrote from 2014 to 2017 that it may convert PC pages with no mobile alternative into a mobile format.¹⁴²⁴²⁶ In 2016 it said pages that pass its adaptation checks aren’t transcoded.²⁷

Dragon Metrics called it the biggest danger to your SEO in 2016.²¹ We found no Baidu text on it after 2017. A proper mobile page sidesteps the question.

If you must keep a desktop-only page, Baidu’s 2015 text gives this opt-out.²⁴ We can’t confirm it still works.

<meta http-equiv="Cache-Control" content="no-transform">

The same text says that with a mobile version, you should use adaptation instead.²⁴

How do you check your pages without Baidu’s test tool?

Use six manual checks. None of them needs a Baidu account, and they cover the rules that carry numbers.

1. Read the source as Baiduspider. Copy the mobile user agent from Baidu’s page,¹⁶ then request your page with it. curl -A "<agent>" https://example.com/page/ does the job. If you detect devices, repeat with the HarmonyOS agent from Baidu’s 2026 notice.²⁸
2. Find your text. Search the response for a sentence from your main content. If it’s missing, the content depends on JavaScript.
3. Count the size. Pipe the same request into wc -c and compare with 128k.
4. Load a phone view. Use device mode in Chrome DevTools and try to swipe sideways. Nothing should move.
5. Estimate the first screen. Before scrolling, check whether main content fills at least half the view.
6. Open it on a real phone in China. Ask someone on a mainland connection to open it in the Baidu app. Our guide to testing access from China explains why a VPN won’t do.

Baidu’s 2014 Q&A says PC and mobile search share one spider, so don’t block it to separate them.¹⁴ Baidu lists separate PC and mobile user agents.¹⁶

The bottom line

Build one responsive site, keep the main text in the HTML, and stay under Baidu’s size and layout limits. Treat 1 second as a direction, and fix what you can control.

Skip MIP, skip old test tools, and read any guide on this topic for its date first. Baidu’s rules are clearer than its current enforcement, so test your own pages.

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