searxng/searxng · warning · SearxEngineAccessDeniedException

{data[message] | Forbid spider access}

Error message

{data[message] | Forbid spider access}

What it means

Raised in baidu's response() when the parsed JSON contains antiFlag == 1: Baidu's anti-spider system flagged the request. The message defaults to 'Forbid spider access' unless the API supplies one. It maps to SearxEngineAccessDeniedException, marking the engine access-denied (temporarily banned).

Source

Thrown at searx/engines/baidu.py:139

        params["cookies"] = get_image_cookies(params["headers"])

    params["url"] = f"{query_url}?{urlencode(query_params)}"
    params["allow_redirects"] = False
    return params


def response(resp):
    # Detect Baidu Captcha, it will redirect to wappass.baidu.com
    if 'wappass.baidu.com/static/captcha' in resp.headers.get('Location', ''):
        raise SearxEngineCaptchaException()

    text = resp.text
    if baidu_category == 'images':
        # baidu's JSON encoder wrongly quotes / and ' characters by \\ and \'
        text = text.replace(r"\/", "/").replace(r"\'", "'")
    data = json.loads(text, strict=False)
    if data.get("antiFlag") == 1:
        raise SearxEngineAccessDeniedException(data.get("message", "Forbid spider access"))
    parsers = {'general': parse_general, 'images': parse_images, 'it': parse_it}

    return parsers[baidu_category](data)


def parse_general(data):
    results = []
    if not data.get("feed", {}).get("entry"):
        raise SearxEngineAPIException("Invalid response")

    for entry in data["feed"]["entry"]:
        if not entry.get("title") or not entry.get("url"):
            continue

        published_date = None
        if entry.get("time"):
            try:
                published_date = datetime.fromtimestamp(entry["time"])

View on GitHub (pinned to 9fea41204f)

Solutions

  1. Wait out the access-denied period (SearXNG auto-suspends then retries the engine)
  2. Clear the cached Baidu cookies (the engine caches cookies with expiry) so fresh ones are fetched
  3. Move the instance behind a different egress IP / proxy
  4. Lower request frequency to Baidu

Example fix

null
Defensive patterns

Strategy: fallback

Validate before calling

null

Try / catch

try:
    results = search(query)
except SearxEngineAccessDeniedException:
    results = []  # engine auto-banned for a period; fall back to other engines

Prevention

When it happens

Trigger: A search request (often the images category JSON API) returns JSON with "antiFlag":1 — Baidu's server-side bot detection rejected the query from this IP/cookie session.

Common situations: Heavy automated querying from a datacenter IP, stale or burned cookies from the engine's cookie cache, or querying in bursts that resemble scraping.

Related errors

AI-assisted analysis of searxng/searxng@9fea41204f (2026-08-27). Data as JSON: /api/errors/45f7fb3dc6eb9928. Report an issue: GitHub.