baiduspider unexplained visit

how does baiduspider know a page exists?

[BHiker]

I got an unexplained visit from Baiduspider. I thought I was the only person knowing a page existed (the only one who used it according to the log). I visited it 298 times between 31 Dec and 01 Jan and then I removed it. On 04 Jan it was visited by Baiduspider. It is the only page visited by Baiduspider. How do they know it existed?

Following are the relevant logs.

c3829dd4.kabel.telenet.be - - [31/Dec/2003:18:37:13 +0100] "GET /cgi-bin/awstats.pl?config=myvirtualhostname&update HTTP/1.1" 200 393 "-" "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows 98)"

... 296 other visist from c3829dd4.kabel.telenet.be

c3829dd4.kabel.telenet.be - - [01/Jan/2004:14:52:06 +0100] "GET /cgi-bin/awstats.pl?config=test.kontrarie&framename=mainright HTTP/1.1" 200 67512 "-" "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows 98)"

...

202.108.250.241 - - [04/Jan/2004:08:57:51 +0100] "GET /cgi-bin/awstats.pl HTTP/1.1" 404 1586 "-" "Baiduspider+(+http://www.baidu.com/search/spider.htm)"

[takagi]

Hi BHiker, welcome to WebmasterWorld.

I can only guess how Baidu could know about your site. Maybe you visited another site by clicking on a link on your site. In that case the URL could end up in a log file that Baidu spidered. Maybe Baidu found the domain on a list of recent added domains (for some ccTLD's these lists are available). Maybe your hosting company put your domain name on a list of companies using their services.