Baidu is a Chinese technology company whose search engine is the most widely used in mainland China. Google Search is not available there, so companies targeting Chinese users need a separate plan. Baidu has its own crawler, Baiduspider, its own webmaster platform, and requirements that differ from Western engines, especially around language, hosting and licensing.
What Baidu favors
Baidu works best with Simplified Chinese content written for mainland users. Sites hosted in mainland China load faster for users there, and hosting in mainland China requires an ICP license from the Chinese government. Many companies use a separate .cn domain or a dedicated Chinese site rather than a subfolder on their global domain.
- Simplified Chinese content, ideally written natively
- Hosting in or near mainland China for speed
- An ICP filing or license where required
- Pages that do not depend on services blocked in China, such as some Google fonts or scripts
Baidu's webmaster platform
Baidu's site owner tools, sometimes called Baidu Search Resource Platform, let you verify a site, submit links and sitemaps, and see crawl data. Its interface and documentation are in Chinese, so teams usually work with a local partner.
Baidu and JavaScript
Baidu's ability to render JavaScript has been reported as more limited than Google's, though its documentation on this is sparse and capabilities change. Serving complete HTML from the server is the safer approach for any page that needs to rank.
Example
A China launch for a collaboration tool
Hypothetical whiteboard app Inkharbor decides to enter mainland China. It sets up a separate Simplified Chinese site with local hosting and an ICP filing, removes dependencies on blocked third-party scripts, and hires native writers rather than machine-translating its English blog.
Common mistakes
Machine-translating the global site
Literal translations miss local search terms and read poorly. Native keyword research and writing are needed.
Questions
It can be indexed, but speed and accessibility for mainland users are often worse, which can hurt performance. Local hosting is the common recommendation.
