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Baidu ERNIE user agents, explained.

Baidu's ERNIE Bot (文心一言) powers answers across Baidu Search and yiyan.baidu.com. Three crawlers share the load — here's how each one works.

Baidu ERNIE · OfficialUpdated Apr 2026~8 min read3 user agents
TL;DR

Baidu uses ERNIEBot for AI-specific crawling, YiyanBot for the yiyan.baidu.com assistant, and traditional Baiduspider whose index also feeds ERNIE. Blocking Baiduspider hurts your Baidu Search rankings in China.

Overview

Baidu ERNIE Bot (文心一言) is China's largest LLM deployment, with 200M+ monthly active users and roughly 35% of China's LLM market. It's integrated into Baidu Search, giving it unmatched distribution for Chinese queries.

Three Baidu crawlers feed ERNIE — and they're tangled together. Baiduspider runs traditional indexing, ERNIEBot and YiyanBot target AI-specific operations.

How to identify the agents

3 crawlers

Baidu ERNIE identifies itself with specific user-agent strings. Verify each through a published IP range.

EB

ERNIEBot

AI crawling · ERNIE model
TrainingAnswers
Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; ERNIEBot/1.0; +https://yiyan.baidu.com/bot)

The AI-specific crawler powering ERNIE Bot's responses and continual learning. Access here directly affects whether your content appears in AI answers across Baidu's ecosystem.

Verifiableyiyan.baidu.com/bot
YB

YiyanBot

Yiyan (文心一言) assistant
Assistant
Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; YiyanBot/1.0; +https://yiyan.baidu.com)

Identifier used for the yiyan.baidu.com assistant's web access. Often appears alongside ERNIEBot in Chinese-market logs.

Verifiableyiyan.baidu.com
BS

Baiduspider

Baidu Search · primary crawler
Search index
Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Baiduspider/2.0; +http://www.baidu.com/search/spider.html)

Baidu's long-running search crawler. Its index feeds ERNIE's retrieval layer — blocking it kills your Baidu Search visibility in China.

Verifiablebaidu.com/search/spider.html

How Baidu ERNIE accesses your content

3 access patterns, mapped to the agents above.

1

AI answers

ERNIEBot feeds ERNIE Bot's generated answers across Baidu surfaces.
2

Assistant

YiyanBot backs the yiyan.baidu.com conversational UI.
3

Search + AI overviews

Baiduspider indexes content for Baidu Search; the same index feeds ERNIE.
!
Warning. Baiduspider and ERNIEBot share infrastructure. Blocking Baiduspider removes you from Baidu Search entirely — in China, that's a ~70% search market hit.

Control Baidu ERNIE's access

robots.txt

You control each agent independently. Common configurations below.

Block AI features, keep searchRecommended

Stay in Baidu Search, limit AI-specific crawls.
# Block AI crawlers, keep Baidu Search User-agent: ERNIEBot Disallow: / User-agent: YiyanBot Disallow: / User-agent: Baiduspider Allow: /

Block all Baidu crawlersRestrictive

Removes you from Baidu Search AND ERNIE. Significant traffic loss in China.
# Block every Baidu crawler User-agent: Baiduspider Disallow: / User-agent: ERNIEBot Disallow: / User-agent: YiyanBot Disallow: /

Selective access

Protect private paths, keep public pages citable.
# Allow public pages, block private User-agent: Baiduspider User-agent: ERNIEBot User-agent: YiyanBot Disallow: /admin/ Disallow: /private/ Disallow: /api/ Allow: /blog/ Allow: /products/

Optimize content for Baidu ERNIE.

ERNIE lives in the Chinese web. Optimize for Baidu Search and you optimize for ERNIE.

Use Simplified Chinese (简体中文). UTF-8 encoding, natural phrasing, and region-appropriate examples.
Host inside China with an ICP license. Chinese CDN (Alibaba Cloud, Tencent Cloud) = faster crawls and better rankings.
Verify in Baidu Webmaster Tools. Submit sitemaps, fix crawl errors, request priority indexing.
Mobile-first design. Most Chinese users are mobile-only. Desktop-first layouts lose ranking signals.
Include Chinese social links. WeChat and Weibo presence reinforces authority for Baidu's systems.

Track Baidu ERNIE visits with xSeek.

See every Baidu crawler hit.

Track ERNIEBot, YiyanBot, and Baiduspider separately. Understand how your content flows into ERNIE answers and Baidu Search AI overviews.

Start free →

Frequently asked questions

Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; ERNIEBot/1.0; +https://yiyan.baidu.com/bot). Baidu also uses YiyanBot for the assistant and the traditional Baiduspider, whose index feeds ERNIE.
Source: Baidu's official crawler documentation and the ERNIE Bot product page.
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