Baidu · Training crawlers
ERNIEBot
Baidu’s ERNIE public-content crawler. Blocking it is a training opt-out; Baiduspider remains the Search discovery path.
- Operator
- Baidu
- Traffic type
- Training crawlers
- Verification
- Not independently verifiable
- robots.txt
- Compliance not documented
Usually means: Bots that collect public pages for future models. Blocking them opts you out of training. It does not, by itself, remove you from live AI search citations.
User-agent
robots.txt and most WAF rules match the token, not the full Mozilla string. Operators often wrap ERNIEBot in extra product or version text.
ERNIEBot
What ERNIEBot does
ERNIEBot collects public pages that may improve Baidu’s ERNIE models. It is not Baiduspider.
How to get discovered
Allow Baiduspider for Baidu search. Treat ERNIEBot as optional training collection.
Why ERNIEBot might skip you
Geo blocks, intentional Disallow, or WAF rules that drop Baidu AI UAs.
robots.txt rule
This snippet opts out of training-style collection. Keep the search and user-fetch tokens from the same operator allowed if you still want citations.
# Optional training opt-out — does not remove you from AI search by itself
User-agent: ERNIEBot
Disallow: /Baidu has not published a machine-readable range file for this token. Do not treat the user-agent alone as proof of identity.
JavaScript: reads raw HTML only.
Other Baidu bots
Training, search, and user-fetch tokens from the same operator are not interchangeable. Allow the discovery path even when you opt out of training.
ERNIEBot FAQ
What is ERNIEBot?
ERNIEBot collects public pages that may improve Baidu’s ERNIE models. It is not Baiduspider.
Should I allow ERNIEBot in robots.txt?
Only if you want to opt out of training-style collection. Blocking ERNIEBot does not, by itself, remove you from live AI search citations — those use the search and user-fetch tokens from Baidu.
How do I know a request is really ERNIEBot?
Baidu has not published a range file for this token. Treat the user-agent as a claimed identity, and do not build a hard IP allowlist from blog posts or screenshots.
Letting ERNIEBot in is the start. Getting cited is the job.
Rankealo checks whether AI crawlers can reach you, then publishes pages built to be retrieved and quoted in ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, and Gemini.
