Baidu Search Scraper

Extract search results from Baidu — China's largest search engine with 70%+ market share. Supports web search, image search, and news search with powerful filtering options including time range, file type, language, site restriction, and more.

What you can scrape

• Web results — organic search listings with titles, URLs, snippets, and dates
• Image results — full image URLs, thumbnails, dimensions, and source pages
• News results — news articles with publisher, date, and excerpt

Use cases

• SEO & market research — analyze how Chinese-language content ranks on Baidu
• Competitor intelligence — monitor brand mentions and competitor content across Chinese web
• Academic research — gather Chinese-language sources and academic content
• Media monitoring — track news coverage and sentiment on any topic
• Content gap analysis — discover popular content and trending queries in China
• Lead generation — find businesses, directories, and profiles related to your niche

Input

Field	Type	Description
queries	array	One or more search queries (required)
mode	select	webSearch, imageSearch, or newsSearch
maxResults	integer	Maximum results per query (1–500, default 50)
timeRange	select	any, day, week, month, year. Applies to webSearch and newsSearch only — Baidu image search has no time filter.
language	select	any, simplified (Simplified Chinese), traditional (Traditional Chinese). webSearch only.
filetype	select	any, pdf, doc, xls, ppt, rtf. webSearch only.
siteRestrict	string	Restrict results to a domain (e.g. wikipedia.org). webSearch only.
exactPhrase	string	Results must contain this exact phrase. webSearch only.
excludeWords	array	Words to exclude from results. webSearch only.
titleOnly	boolean	Match search terms in page titles only. webSearch only.
resolveUrls	boolean	Follow Baidu's redirect links to extract the true destination URL for results where it wasn't already extracted from the page. webSearch only. Default true.
proxyConfiguration	object	Apify Proxy settings (recommended for non-Chinese IPs)

Example input (web search)

{
  "mode": "webSearch",
  "queries": ["人工智能 最新进展", "artificial intelligence China"],
  "maxResults": 50,
  "timeRange": "month",
  "language": "simplified",
  "proxyConfiguration": {
    "useApifyProxy": true
  }
}

Example input (image search)

{
  "mode": "imageSearch",
  "queries": ["Great Wall of China"],
  "maxResults": 100,
  "proxyConfiguration": {
    "useApifyProxy": true
  }
}

Example input (news search)

{
  "mode": "newsSearch",
  "queries": ["technology innovation"],
  "maxResults": 30,
  "timeRange": "week",
  "proxyConfiguration": {
    "useApifyProxy": true
  }
}

Output

Web search result

{
  "query": "artificial intelligence",
  "position": 1,
  "page": 1,
  "resultType": "organic",
  "title": "What is Artificial Intelligence? - Wikipedia",
  "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_intelligence",
  "baiduUrl": "https://www.baidu.com/link?url=abc123",
  "displayUrl": "en.wikipedia.org",
  "snippet": "Artificial intelligence (AI) is intelligence demonstrated by machines...",
  "date": "2024-01-15",
  "scrapedAt": "2024-06-01T10:30:00+00:00"
}

Image search result

{
  "query": "Great Wall of China",
  "position": 1,
  "title": "Great Wall of China at sunset",
  "imageUrl": "https://images.example.com/greatwall_full.jpg",
  "thumbnailUrl": "https://images.example.com/greatwall_thumb.jpg",
  "sourceUrl": "https://travel.example.com/china-great-wall",
  "sourceDomain": "travel.example.com",
  "width": 1920,
  "height": 1080,
  "scrapedAt": "2024-06-01T10:30:00+00:00"
}

News search result

{
  "query": "technology innovation",
  "position": 1,
  "page": 1,
  "title": "China tech firms unveil AI breakthroughs at annual summit",
  "url": "https://news.example.com/china-ai-summit",
  "source": "Reuters",
  "date": "2024-05-28",
  "snippet": "Leading Chinese technology companies showcased their latest...",
  "scrapedAt": "2024-06-01T10:30:00+00:00"
}

Related search result (web mode)

{
  "query": "artificial intelligence",
  "position": 11,
  "page": 1,
  "resultType": "related_search",
  "searchTerm": "machine learning applications",
  "scrapedAt": "2024-06-01T10:30:00+00:00"
}

Proxy recommendation

Baidu is a Chinese search engine. From non-Chinese IP addresses (most cloud/datacenter IPs outside China), Baidu may throttle or redirect requests. Using Apify Proxy with the AUTO datacenter group is strongly recommended to get reliable results from a broad pool of IPs.

Enable proxy in the input:

{
  "proxyConfiguration": {
    "useApifyProxy": true
  }
}

Search operators (web mode)

The scraper transparently applies Baidu search operators from your input fields:

Input field	Operator applied	Example
siteRestrict	site:domain.com	site:wikipedia.org
exactPhrase	"exact phrase"	"machine learning"
excludeWords	-word for each	-java -ruby
titleOnly	intitle:query	intitle:artificial intelligence

Limitations

• Baidu personalises results for Chinese IP addresses; non-Chinese IPs may see different result sets
• Very rapid scraping (hundreds of requests per minute) may trigger CAPTCHA — use proxy and keep maxResults reasonable
• Baidu image search returns results from Baidu's own index, which may differ from Google Images for the same query
• News results reflect Baidu News sources; international English-language news may have limited coverage

FAQ

Why am I getting 0 results? Enable proxyConfiguration with useApifyProxy: true. Baidu often blocks datacenter IP addresses from outside China.

What languages does Baidu search support? Baidu indexes content in all languages but is optimised for Chinese. The language filter restricts results to Simplified or Traditional Chinese script.

Can I scrape more than 500 results? The current maximum is 500 results per query. For larger datasets, run multiple queries with different keywords.

What is a "related search" result? Baidu displays a "Related Searches" box on many result pages. These are captured as records with resultType: "related_search" and a searchTerm field.

Does the scraper resolve Baidu redirect URLs? Yes. In most cases the direct destination URL is already extracted from Baidu's mu attribute — no additional HTTP request needed. In the rare fallback case where only a Baidu redirect link (baiduUrl) is available, the scraper follows it and replaces url with the resolved destination when resolveUrls is enabled (default true). baiduUrl is always kept alongside url when present, for traceability.