What Is baidu.com, and Is It Safe?

Last Updated on October 25, 2024 by Mathew Diekhake

Headquartered in Beijing’s Haidian District, Baidu (baidu.com) is a Chinese multinational technology company. Baidu was founded in 2000 by Robin Li and Eric Xu, as a search engine platform specializing in internet-related services, artificial intelligence (AI), and diverse products. Baidu is one of the leading AI companies in the world, offering a full and diversified portfolio of AI services such as AI chips, deep learning framework, Core AI capabilities as well as an open AI platform to promote its application and use. Baidu.com stands as the fourth largest search engine in the world, coming in behind Google, Bing, and Yahoo. Baidu became the first Chinese company to be included in the NASDAQ 100 index in 2005 and as of late 2021, Baidu held a market cap of USD 70 billion.

ALTERNATIVES

Similar sites to baidu.com include hao123.com, zhihu.com, msn.cn, sogou.com, 163.com, weibo.com, google.com, bing.com, google.cn, and sohu.com.

DESCRIPTION

Having been a webmaster since 2011, I am very familiar with baidu.com as a search engine. I think baidu.com has become much better in recent years thanks to allowing more Western publications into their search engine. I don’t know if it was a restriction in place by the Chinese government or a personal choice of baidu.com, but it was rare to find any Western content in its search engine before 2020. Thankfully things are changing and the queries that I do a good job of answering are now landing on my website and it’s common for me to get Chinese visitors. It still has a ways to go if it wants Western users though because it’s not easy to use as a native English speaker who doesn’t speak other languages. I also find the images difficult to use: they are small to start with and when I don’t find what I want, I struggle to refine my search without getting confused as to what I’m supposed to be doing. Generally, the search engine for links is quite good and I think it’s best that they do their own thing rather than copy google.com. As google.com always says, your success won’t come from copying the same thing that someone else has already done even if it is a really good product.

HISTORY

As of March 2024, baidu.com has 4.643 billion monthly views (4.6B, Feb 2023), acccording to Similar Web. The Wayback Machine provides June 6, 2000 as the approximate date of conception for baidu.com. The Internet Archive has saved baidu.com 4,131,585 times between June 6, 2000 and April 13, 2024.

Traffic has been regurlary increasing for the site, with the most traffic picking up between 2016 and 2019.

Is baidu.com Safe?

I analyzed baidu.com for malware and malicious content to check if it was legit or a scam. Here are the results:

I checked baidu.com on Sucuri, and it returned as a medium security risk.

Sucuri says baidu.com is a medium security risk because of TLS recommendations (no HTTP to HTTPS redirect).

Security hardening flaws:

• Missing Strict-Transport-Security security header. Affected pages:
  https://www.baidu.com/404javascript.js
  https://www.baidu.com/404testpage4525d2fdc

I then ran a parasite scan with Unmask Parasites on baidu.com, and it is clean.

I also checked baidu.com on VirusTotal, and it is clean.

In conclusion, Sucuri says baidu.com is a medium security risk because of TLS recommendations (no HTTP to HTTPS redirect). No vendors associated with Sucuri or VirusTotal have blacklisted baidu.com or deemed it as malicious. OVERALL GRADE: Relatively Safe.

Links and Profiles

Website: baidu.com