How to Install and Use baidu web search in OpenClaw

Open your terminal and run the ClawHub install command. ClawHub is the OpenClaw skill registry — it handles downloading the skill, resolving dependencies, and registering it with your OpenClaw installation. The baidu-web-search skill is a lightweight package with no heavy dependencies, so installation typically completes in under 30 seconds. After the install command finishes, ClawHub will confirm the skill is active. You do not need to restart OpenClaw — skills are loaded dynamically. If you have multiple OpenClaw profiles, ClawHub installs skills per-profile by default. Use the `--global` flag if you want the skill available across all profiles. Verify the skill installed correctly by listing your installed skills. The output should include baidu-web-search with a version number and 'active' status.

1# Install the Baidu Web Search skill
2clawhub install baidu-web-search
3
4# Verify installation
5clawhub list --installed | grep baidu-web-search
6
7# Optional: install globally across all OpenClaw profiles
8clawhub install baidu-web-search --global

Open the OpenClaw chat and type a search query. The baidu-web-search skill intercepts queries that mention Baidu or that OpenClaw routes to it as a search tool. You can address it directly by mentioning 'Baidu' in your prompt, or configure it as a default search provider in the next step. For your first test, keep the query simple — a clear topic in plain English or Mandarin Chinese. The skill sends the query to Baidu, retrieves the top results, and returns titles, URLs, and snippet text back to the OpenClaw chat. Results will often include Chinese-language content; if you need translations, follow up with a translation prompt. If the skill is not picking up your query, try prefixing it with 'Search Baidu for' to explicitly trigger the Baidu routing. OpenClaw uses intent detection, and being explicit helps during initial testing.

The baidu-web-search skill works out of the box with default settings, but you can tune its behavior through the OpenClaw config file. Common configuration options include result count (how many results to return per query), safe search level, and whether to prefer news results over general web results. The OpenClaw config file is located at `~/.openclaw/config.yaml` on macOS and Linux, or `%APPDATA%\OpenClaw\config.yaml` on Windows. Open it in any text editor and add a `skills` section if one does not already exist. Changes to the config file take effect immediately — you do not need to restart OpenClaw. For teams working on Chinese market research, setting `result_count` to 10 and `include_snippets` to true gives the most useful output per query without hitting rate limits.

1# ~/.openclaw/config.yaml
2skills:
3  baidu-web-search:
4    result_count: 10          # Number of results to return (default: 5)
5    include_snippets: true    # Include result snippet text (default: true)
6    safe_search: moderate     # off | moderate | strict (default: moderate)
7    language: zh              # Preferred result language: zh | en | auto (default: auto)
8    news_priority: false      # Set true to prioritize Baidu News results

Baidu Web Search supports the same kind of advanced search operators that power users rely on with Google. You can pass these directly in your OpenClaw prompts to get more targeted results. Useful operators include site: (search within a specific domain), intitle: (search for pages where the keyword appears in the title), and filetype: (find specific file types like PDFs or Excel files). For researchers and analysts, combining Baidu Web Search with OpenClaw's summarization capabilities is especially powerful: search for a topic, then ask OpenClaw to synthesize the top results into a structured summary. This workflow replaces hours of manual browsing with a single conversation thread. RapidDev's team uses this exact pattern when building AI research agents for clients entering the Chinese market — the combination of Baidu Web Search for data retrieval and OpenClaw's language processing for synthesis produces results that no single Western search tool can match.

1# Advanced Baidu search syntax examples for OpenClaw prompts
2
3# Search within a specific Chinese domain
4"Search Baidu for site:zhihu.com opinions on electric vehicles"
5
6# Find pages with keyword in the title
7"Search Baidu for intitle:人工智能 news from the past week"
8
9# Find specific file types
10"Search Baidu for filetype:pdf China semiconductor industry report 2026"
11
12# Combine operators
13"Search Baidu for site:xinhua.net intitle:technology news today"

The real power of ClawHub skills comes from combining them in a single OpenClaw conversation. You can use Baidu Web Search alongside translation skills, summarization tools, and other search providers in the same session. OpenClaw maintains context across these tool calls, so you can search, translate, compare, and synthesize in one flowing conversation. For example, search Baidu for Chinese perspectives on a topic, then immediately ask OpenClaw to search Brave or Tavily for Western perspectives, and finally synthesize both into a comparative analysis. This multi-source research workflow is one of the highest-value use cases for OpenClaw agents in international business contexts. To see what skills are available to chain with Baidu Web Search, run `clawhub list --installed` to view your active skills inventory.

1# Check all installed skills available for chaining
2clawhub list --installed
3
4# Example: chain Baidu search with Summarize skill
5# In OpenClaw chat:
6# 1. "Search Baidu for [topic]"
7# 2. "Summarize those results in English"
8# 3. "Now search Brave for [same topic]"
9# 4. "Compare the Baidu and Brave results"