Baidu Videos Scraper

Search Baidu's public video results and export normalized, API-ready video records. The Actor enters each query through Baidu's search interface when it is available, falls back to the canonical query-driven video route after a bounded homepage timeout, accepts only cards inside verified Baidu video templates, resolves Baidu redirects to canonical destinations, and stores one clean dataset after every query succeeds.

Modes

• Single query: set query.
• Batch search: set queries with up to 20 phrases. Duplicate queries are removed and output is interleaved fairly.
• Single item: set maxItems and maxItemsPerQuery to 1.
• Multiple offsets: raise maxPages. The Actor stops when the next offset contains no new verified video templates.
• No results: a valid search with no verified video cards completes with an empty dataset.

You never need to construct or paste a Baidu result-page URL.

Input

Field	Default	Purpose
query	sample Chinese query	One search phrase
queries	[]	Optional batch of search phrases
maxItems	50	Total output limit across all queries
maxItemsPerQuery	50	Per-query limit
maxPages	5	Maximum verified result offsets inspected per query
maxConcurrency	2	Concurrent query sessions, from 1 to 3
maxRequestRetries	1	Retries for temporary failures; verification pages are not retried
navigationTimeoutSecs	45	Per-navigation timeout
requestHandlerTimeoutSecs	150	Per-query timeout
resolveRedirects	true	Resolve redirect-only cards concurrently; disabling it omits those cards
blockMedia	true	Block video and font downloads without blocking result metadata
market	zh-CN	Browser fingerprint locale and output market
proxyConfiguration	direct	Optional Apify Residential or custom proxy
debug	false	Emit non-sensitive extraction counters

Example batch input:

{
  "queries": ["机器学习 教程", "人工智能 教程"],
  "maxItems": 20,
  "maxItemsPerQuery": 10,
  "maxPages": 2,
  "maxConcurrency": 2,
  "proxyConfiguration": {
    "useApifyProxy": true,
    "apifyProxyGroups": ["RESIDENTIAL"],
    "countryCode": "CN"
  }
}

GOOGLE_SERP cannot be used with Baidu. It is an HTTP proxy specialized for supported Google Search and Google Shopping traffic. For Baidu, use direct access, an authorized Residential proxy, or custom proxy URLs.

Dataset contract

The 59-field schema covers:

• Stable identity and ordering: id, global/query/result/page positions.
• Text: title, sanitized highlighted title, highlighted terms, description, and snippet when displayed.
• Destinations: canonical watch/source URLs, domain, platform, and video ID.
• Media: thumbnail and preview image URLs.
• Video metadata: duration, views, likes, comments, channel/uploader, and publication date when displayed.
• Classification and provenance: short/ad flags, extraction method, engine metadata, query, locale, and scrape timestamp.

Required fields are always present with documented types. Optional fields that Baidu does not expose are omitted recursively—never stored as null, empty strings, empty arrays, or placeholders. Challenge, CAPTCHA, ordinary web-result, duplicate, malformed URL, unsafe HTML, and secret-bearing records are rejected.

Reliability and performance

• Crawlee's Playwright-compatible fingerprint generator creates a coherent Chrome desktop profile per session, aligned with locale and timezone.
• Sessions persist cookies and rotate after blocked responses.
• Redirects are resolved concurrently and meaningful multi-part parameters such as Bilibili's p value remain part of the stable canonical URL.
• Query buffers are written only after all requested queries finish, preventing partial datasets after a later failure.
• Video and font downloads are blocked by default; HTML, scripts, styles, thumbnail metadata, and destination requests remain available.
• Representative local single and normal searches complete well below the three-to-four-minute target.

Current source limitations

Baidu may expose a video carousel on the first offset and ordinary web cards on later offsets. Ordinary cards are not videos and are never stored; therefore a run can return fewer items than requested. Some layouts do not display descriptions or view counts, so those fields remain absent rather than inferred.

Repeated direct requests can trigger Baidu's interactive verification. The Actor detects this condition, marks the session bad, fails closed, and does not attempt to solve or bypass the challenge. Use an authorized China Residential proxy in Apify Cloud when direct access becomes rate-limited.