Baidu · Other AI bots
YiyanBot
Baidu’s Ernie/Yiyan assistant crawler token. Distinct from Baiduspider (Search) and ERNIEBot (training-style collection).
- Operator
- Baidu
- Traffic type
- Other AI bots
- Verification
- Not independently verifiable
- robots.txt
- Compliance not documented
Usually means: Link-preview, ads, and product fetchers. Allow them if you want unfurls and landing-page fetches to work; they are not the citation path.
User-agent
robots.txt and most WAF rules match the token, not the full Mozilla string. Operators often wrap YiyanBot in extra product or version text.
YiyanBot
What YiyanBot does
YiyanBot is associated with Baidu’s Yiyan assistant fetches. If you want that product to read a URL, this token needs a 200.
How to get discovered
Allow YiyanBot alongside Baiduspider when the Baidu ecosystem matters. Keep a crawlable Chinese or multilingual HTML version if that is the audience.
Why YiyanBot might skip you
Western WAFs dropping Baidu UAs, or robots files that never list YiyanBot.
robots.txt rule
Allow this token on public pages you want retrieved or cited. A CDN “Block AI bots” toggle can still 403 it after robots.txt says Allow.
# Keep YiyanBot eligible to fetch this site
User-agent: YiyanBot
Allow: /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.
YiyanBot FAQ
What is YiyanBot?
YiyanBot is associated with Baidu’s Yiyan assistant fetches. If you want that product to read a URL, this token needs a 200.
Should I allow YiyanBot in robots.txt?
Yes if you want Baidu to be able to fetch and cite this site. Blocking YiyanBot is how pages stay invisible to that product even when Googlebot still crawls them.
How do I know a request is really YiyanBot?
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 YiyanBot 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.
