Baidu adds AI citation and CTR tracking to webmaster tools
What this answers
- How does Baidu measure AI citations?
- Baidu's new AI Traffic Analysis dashboard in its webmaster tools tracks AI citations, AI impressions and AI clicks, then calculates AI CTR as clicks divided by citations rather than impressions, per Search Engine Journal.
- Is Baidu's AI citation data live yet?
- Not fully — as of the September 2026 rollout the dashboards remain empty while the feature rolls out in phases, per Search Engine Journal.
Baidu added an AI Traffic Analysis section to its webmaster tools around September 15, tracking AI citations, AI impressions, AI clicks and a citations-based AI CTR — clicks divided by citations rather than impressions, which can understate real link performance, per Search Engine Journal. The dashboards remain empty as the rollout continues in phases, and the tool covers only citations inside Baidu’s traditional search results, not its standalone AI products or rival Chinese platforms such as DeepSeek and Doubao.
Why it matters: Baidu joins Bing in exposing first-party AI citation data to publishers, but its narrower CTR formula and empty early dashboards show how uneven that data still is across engines.
Posted to the wire September 23, 2026. Edited by Joe Balewski.