Before they can be displayed to users as search results, webpages must first be crawled and then indexed by search engines in a database capable of being computationally searched. Simply put, indexed pages are those that the search engine deems valuable to users.
On Baidu, China’s largest search engine, we can use its Webmaster Tools to accelerate indexation. Here, we discuss how.
Baidu Site Indexation: Link Submit Tool
Baidu Webmaster Tools provides a link submit tool that lets you inform Baidu to crawl your site by actively pushing data to Baidu search. It can speed up crawling and shorten the link time of the crawler discovery website.
Link Submit Tool
Baidu currently offers 4 ways to submit content: active push, auto push, manual submission, and sitemap. For optimal indexation, we recommend implementing all 4, when possible.
Baidu Site Indexation: Active Push
This option is best for new webpages, though you can also use it to facilitate indexation of older pages. To use this function, you must make a data push interface for your website. After enabling the active push function, you will see the token of the interface call address. When a new page is posted, you should submit immediately to accelerate indexation.
Active Push
Baidu Site Indexation: Auto Push
This is the most convenient programmatic submission method. By implementing a snippet of JavaScript code, the page link data is sent to Baidu upon each page visit.
Auto Push
Baidu Site Indexation: Manual Submission
You can manually submit links to Baidu by inputting them into a text box. This is suitable if you are doing a one-time link submission. You can submit up to 20 links at a time.
Manual Submission
Baidu Site Indexation: Sitemap
This is the most common site indexation method. You can notify Baidu of any new content by specifying your sitemap URL in Baidu Webmaster Tools. You can then use your sitemap to provide additional information about your site, such as the date of any updates, the frequency of updates to your sitemap file, and more.
A sitemap file must contain no more than 50,000 URLs and a file size of no more than 10 MB. If your sitemap exceeds these limits, split it into multiple smaller sitemaps. These restrictions help ensure that your web server is not overloaded with large files. The number of sitemap files submitted for a single site must be less than 50,000.
Sitemap
Because the sitemap is the most common and convenient way to accelerate site indexation, we’ll go into greater detail of this method.
Accelerating Baidu Indexation using your Sitemap
Before using the sitemap submit tool, you must first create a sitemap.
A sitemap is an XML file that follows a strict structure defined by the sitemap protocol. It can contain any number of links from a website along with additional crawling advice to search engine bots, such as when a page was last updated, how often it changes, and how important it is in relation to other URLs on the site.
XML Sitemap
Once you’ve created and uploaded your sitemap, enter the sitemap address and submit. You can submit up to 10 file addresses at a time. Don’t forget that each sitemap address file could contain up to 50,000 URLs and must be less than 10MB.
Submit Sitemap
You can track your submission status overtime in Baidu Webmaster Tools. In the screenshot below, you can see that the site is primarily relying on the sitemap for URL submission.
Submission Status
Submitting links will help Baidu discover your new content; however, this doesn’t guarantee indexation. The determining factor is content quality, so always ensure that your content meets users’ needs and answers their questions effectively and efficiently.
