What is ERNIEBot?
ERNIEBot is a web crawler operated by Baidu that downloads website content to support ERNIE training and generated answers across Baidu services. Agent Analytics can track when it visits your website.
Overview
| Operated By | Baidu |
| Expected To Follow Robots.txt | Yes |
| Insights Last Updated | July 7, 2026 |
Category
Expected Behavior
ERNIEBot crawls websites to build AI training datasets, and its operator decides which sites, how often, and how deep it goes. Expect broad sweeps that fetch far more pages per visit than a search crawler would, on an unpredictable schedule. Volume can run heavy while a collection pass is underway, then stop entirely.
How To Block ERNIEBot With Robots.txt
Add this rule to your robots.txt file to block ERNIEBot from accessing your entire website, or use Automatic Robots.txt to block all AI data scrapers at once. You can customize which pages are blocked by swapping out / for a different path.
User-agent: ERNIEBot # https://knownagents.com/agents/erniebot
Disallow: /ERNIEBot Global Insights
As of July 7, 2026, this data reflects agent visits measured across thousands of websites using Agent Analytics, combined with daily scans of the world's top 1000 websites and their robots.txt files.
Robots.txt Blocked Percentage
Country of Origin
Robots.txt Blocking Trend
0% of top websites block ERNIEBot in their robots.txt files.
Overall AI Data Scraper Traffic
2.4% of all web traffic came from AI data scrapers.
Frequently Asked Questions
Should I Block ERNIEBot?
Block it if you want control over how your work trains AI models. ERNIEBot downloads your content into training datasets without attribution, compensation, or any promise of traffic back. The case for allowing it is reach, because models trained on your content can surface your brand in AI answers. Neither choice changes your Google rankings. Almost none of the top websites we track have robots.txt rules for ERNIEBot right now.
Does ERNIEBot Respect Robots.txt?
Yes. ERNIEBot is expected to honor robots.txt rules, so a disallow rule is the right first move. Automatic Robots.txt adds and maintains that rule for you, and Agent Analytics confirms ERNIEBot actually honors it.
Does ERNIEBot Access Private Content?
ERNIEBot targets public content, but the boundary is not always respected. Some training data scrapers go after paywalled or gated pages when the operator wants that data. If a page loads without signing in, assume it can be collected.
Why Is ERNIEBot Visiting My Website?
Your content matched what Baidu wants in a training dataset. ERNIEBot discovers pages mechanically, through links from other sites, sitemaps, and seed lists, not because anyone chose your site personally.
How Can I Tell if ERNIEBot Is Visiting My Website?
Agent Analytics tracks ERNIEBot visits in real time alongside every other known AI agent, crawler, and scraper. You can also check your server logs for requests whose user agent string contains "ERNIEBot". Look for broad sweeps that fetch large numbers of pages in sequence. Keep in mind that ERNIEBot doesn't publish a verification method, so any client can claim its user agent string and a log match is a hint rather than proof.