The index volume tool

Index volume (索引量) is the count of pages Baidu holds for a site, reported in the Search Resource Platform. Baidu’s own framing is exact: index volume is the basis of traffic, which is why a fall is worth investigating rather than watching.

Cause 1 — URLs not standardised

• Several domains or URL forms serving the same content: multiple domains answering 200, or one domain with case variants and changed URL rules. Remedy: choose the primary form, 301 everything else to it, and submit the change through the site revision tool.
• Your content on external platforms. Syndication and partner distribution can lead Baidu to index the external copy and reject the original. Remedy: push new URLs through the API immediately on publication, and delay syndication so your copy is seen first.
• Mirroring — someone serving your content on their domain. Remedy: DNS and server security, bind to a single resolvable domain, and use absolute URLs in page links so a mirrored copy links back to you.

Cause 2 — declining favour

• Content quality falling — stop simple copying, integrate information.
• Publishing volume and frequency falling. Baidu describes the mechanism explicitly: lower frequency reduces the site’s quota, which shows first as reduced crawl frequency and then as reduced index volume. Publishing rate is an input to crawl budget here.
• Time-sensitive content expiring — such pages are not kept indefinitely.
• Bad neighbourhoods on the page — paid soft-article links, aggressive pop-ups, sensitive content, cheating.

Cause 3 — an algorithm

Watch the platform messages and the search dynamics announcements, correct according to the published notice, submit feedback, and wait for the next algorithm update.

Cause 4 — lost trust

• Link-factory participation — reduce outbound links, never vote for poor pages.
• Subject change — Baidu’s remedy is unusually specific: process the old field’s pages as dead links, submit them, block access to those URLs, and only then publish the new subject with active submission.
• Guilt by association — many penalised sites on the same IP or the same owner. Leave the neighbourhood.
• Hosting — offshore hosting can be unstable, and stability affects everything above.

How to work a drop

Check crawl frequency first: if it fell before index volume did, the cause is on the quota side — publishing rate, server availability or trust. If crawl held steady while the index fell, the cause is page-level: duplication, quality or an algorithm.