What is YiyanBot?
YiyanBot is a web crawler operated by Baidu that fetches web content for the yiyan.baidu.com assistant and related ERNIE-generated answers. You can set up Agent Analytics to see when YiyanBot visits your website.
Category
| Operated By | Baidu |
| Source | Official Website |
| Triggered By | User action |
| Used for AI Model Training | Not expected |
| Affects AI Chat & Search Visibility | Yes |
| Expected To Follow Robots.txt | Yes |
Why Is YiyanBot Visiting My Website?
A user asked Baidu's assistant a question your page could help answer. YiyanBot retrieved the page to support its response, often with a citation linking back to your site.
Should I Block YiyanBot?
Usually not. Blocking YiyanBot can keep your pages out of AI-generated answers and eliminate potential citation traffic. It does not improve traditional search rankings. For context, 8% of the top websites we track currently have robots.txt rules for YiyanBot.
How Do I Block YiyanBot Using Robots.txt?
Add this rule to your robots.txt file to block YiyanBot from accessing your website, or use Automatic Robots.txt to block all AI assistants at once. You can customize which pages are blocked by swapping out / for a different path.
User-agent: YiyanBot # https://knownagents.com/agents/yiyanbot
Disallow: /Insights for YiyanBot
As of November 9, 2026, this data reflects agent visits measured across thousands of websites using Agent Analytics, combined with daily scans of the top 1000 websites and their robots.txt files.
Robots.txt Compliance
Country of Origin
Robots.txt Blocked Percentage
YiyanBot Traffic
Frequently Asked Questions
What Traffic Patterns Should I Expect From YiyanBot?
YiyanBot makes isolated, on-demand requests rather than crawling your site. Traffic follows user demand, ranging from sporadic fetches to steady visits for a popular assistant.
Does YiyanBot Follow Robots.txt Rules?
YiyanBot is expected to follow robots.txt rules, so a disallow rule is the appropriate first step if you want to block it. Automatic Robots.txt can add and maintain that rule, while Agent Analytics lets you verify whether YiyanBot respects it.
Is YiyanBot Used for AI Model Training?
Not ordinarily. YiyanBot is not categorized as an AI training scraper or data provider, so AI model training is not its expected purpose.
Does Blocking YiyanBot Affect AI Search or Citations?
Yes, for requests handled by YiyanBot. Blocking it can prevent the assistant from retrieving your pages for an answer or linking to them, but a separate crawler may control automatic AI search indexing.
Does YiyanBot Access Private Content?
Not ordinarily. YiyanBot fetches pages as an anonymous visitor without a stored login. Content protected by a paywall or login remains out of reach.
How Can I Verify a Request From YiyanBot?
Agent Analytics tracks YiyanBot visits in real time. You can also check your server logs for requests whose user-agent string contains "YiyanBot". Look for a single-page request with no follow-up navigation. Because YiyanBot does not publish a verification method, any client can claim its identity and a log match is only a clue.
How Is YiyanBot Different From Other Baidu Agents?
Baidu operates separate agents for different purposes, so each agent should be evaluated and controlled independently.
- ERNIEBot: ERNIEBot is a web crawler operated by Baidu that downloads website content to support ERNIE training and generated answers across Baidu services.
- Baiduspider: Baiduspider is Baidu's web crawler that indexes web content for China's largest search engine, crawling and analyzing websites to provide search results for Baidu users.
- Baiduspider-render: Baiduspider-render is a web crawler operated by Baidu, China's largest search engine, specifically designed to render and index JavaScript-heavy pages. This variant proce…
- Baidu-ADS: Baidu-ADS is Baidu's Anti-DDoS Service proxy that filters and scrubs web traffic during detected DDoS attacks, routing sanitized requests back to target servers for prote…