Baidu now reports AI citations, impressions, and clicks in its webmaster tools. The data isn't live yet, but the metric definitions already reveal plenty.
Baidu has quietly added a new section to its webmaster tools: AI Traffic Analysis. Chinese webmasters began spotting the menu item around September 15, and Baidu confirmed it in an official notice on September 16. There is one catch. The data isn’t live yet. Baidu says the feature is rolling out in phases and the data service hasn’t officially started, so dashboards are currently empty.
Even without data, the launch is worth a close look. What Baidu chose to measure, and how it defined those measurements, tells us a lot about how it thinks about AI search.
The dashboard also includes a citation trend chart, a count of cited pages over time, and tables of top keywords and top pages. Both tables are sorted by clicks and capped at the top 50,000 entries. Data is updated daily for the previous day, and Baidu warns that updates may be delayed.
Baidu calculates AI CTR as clicks divided by citations, not clicks divided by impressions. That differs from the standard search console logic most SEOs are used to. Baidu tracks citations and impressions separately, which suggests a page can be cited without its link actually being seen, for example in a collapsed source list. If that’s the case, Baidu’s CTR will understate how well a visible link performs. I’d recommend calculating clicks divided by impressions yourself alongside Baidu’s figure.
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