Crawl Anomaly

The following article is our English interpretation of an post originally published on Baidu Webmaster Help pages in Chinese language. If you'd like to check out the original article, you can find it here: https://ziyuan.baidu.com/college/courseinfo?id=267&page=8

A crawl anomaly occurs when Baiduspider (Baidu’s search crawler) is unable to successfully access or retrieve content from your website.

How Do Crawl Anomalies Affect Your Site?

If Baiduspider encounters persistent issues crawling a large portion of your site, Baidu may interpret this as a negative user experience signal. This can lead to:

  • Reduced crawl frequency
  • Lower indexing priority
  • Decreased site authority and ranking
  • Ultimately, a drop in organic traffic from Baidu

What Causes Crawl Anomalies?

Crawl anomalies generally stem from two categories: site-related issues and link-related issues.

A. Site-Level Issues

  1. DNS Errors
    When Baiduspider fails to resolve your domain’s IP address, a DNS error occurs.
    Possible causes:
  • Incorrect IP configuration
  • Your domain registrar or DNS provider blocking Baiduspider

How to fix:
Use tools like WHOIS or host to verify if your domain’s IP is correctly configured and accessible. If there’s an issue, contact your DNS provider to update or correct the IP.

  1. Connection Timeout
    The crawler is unable to establish a connection within a set timeframe.
    Likely causes:
  • Server overload
  • Unstable hosting environment
  1. Crawl Timeout
    Baiduspider establishes a connection, but the page takes too long to load.
    Likely causes:
  • Slow server response
  • Insufficient bandwidth
  1. Connection Errors
    Baiduspider attempts to connect, but either:
  • The connection fails
  • The server actively refuses the request

B. URL/Link-Level Issues

  1. Access Denied (HTTP 403)
    The crawler is blocked from accessing the URL. This could be due to server configurations, IP blocks, or permissions.
  1. Page Not Found (HTTP 404)
    The requested page doesn’t exist.
    Common causes:
  • Deleted or moved content without redirects
  • Typo in internal/external links
  1. Server Errors (HTTP 5xx)
    Indicates that your server encountered an error while processing the request.
    Examples:
  • Server unavailable (503)
  • Internal server error (500)
  1. Other Client Errors (HTTP 4xx)
    Any other 4xx error besides 403 and 404, such as:

Request timeout (408)

Bad request (400)

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