Adding and verifying a site

Verification proves control of the site before Baidu shows any of its data. Three methods, and the choice determines how easily verification is lost later.

The three methods

• File verification — upload a named file to the site root. Survives template changes; lost in a platform migration.
• HTML tag — a meta tag in the home page head. Quickest, and the first casualty of a redesign.
• CNAME / DNS record — a DNS entry. Slowest to propagate and the only one that survives both a redesign and a replatform.

What to verify

The exact address that should rank — protocol and www form included. As with any search engine, variants are distinct properties, and verifying the wrong one produces a console that reports on an address nobody visits.

The practical requirements

• The site must answer 200 for Baidu’s verification request — a bot filter or firewall blocking it produces a failure with no informative message.
• The file must contain exactly what was issued; servers that wrap files in a template break it.
• The tag must be in the head of the home page, not elsewhere.

Why we recommend DNS

Because losing verification loses access to the data, and it happens at the worst time — during a redesign, when the meta tag is dropped, which is exactly when the indexing data is needed. A DNS record survives everything short of a domain transfer, and adding a second method as a fallback costs nothing.

Access for an agency

Verify under the client’s own account and grant access, rather than verifying under an agency account. It costs a few minutes more and it means the client keeps the property and the history when the relationship ends — the same principle that applies to every other search console.

After verification

Data does not appear immediately. Crawl and index figures build over days; query data takes longer. A site verified on Monday and judged on Friday will look as though Baidu has no interest in it.