Does Cloudflare hurt Google SEO?

[doubledhamal]

It does not. I have seen some very popular forums using it and they rank very well for thousands of keywords.

 

[laur.laurix]

Theoretically Cloudflare anti DDoS protection, has control over Google bots. But still, I believe that many attackers (and scrappers), love to use Googlebot common User Agents and similar footprint to identify with certain webs (and bypass CF restrictions)

Hence, probably CF over the years have been strengthening their measures. The problem? I always wondered if this could lead to them actually blocking some Google crawler intents at some point.

This is why personally I've been avoiding CF (at least in the under-attack mode). I know that for some sites is a lifesaver because they are perma being attacked (like BHW not going further), and still they rank pretty decently. But for smaller sites, that might have had a DDoS attack once in a while is an overkill and definitely I'm almost sure, that this hinders your ranks significantly. So, despite CF being one of the best anti-DDoS services out there by far, I would rather choose a weaker alternative, hosting in another CDN when possible, or using CF without the "under attack mode"

And if you are not using this mode, then its not the fault of CF your issues in the rankings its just a coincidence.

On the bright side, I've seen cache hits on CF that for 100% of the other CDNs were cache misses. From a WPO perspective, this is unprecedented in a CDN, they are by far the best no doubts, and if Google actually values WPO (which I seriously doubt), this is technically a positive factor on the other side.

I can confirm 100% that CF is sometimes interfering with G spiders....I noticed this phenomenon when I was trying to map undercover G crawlers....like you said small websites should avoid CF and rely only on good hosting with good DDoS protection and other goodies.

 

[OriginWorld]

Thanks everyone for your help.

My site started to get slow traffic from Google after disabling the rule, but the March core update was in the same time frame, so I can't rule anything out. I need to mention that my other cloudflare sites are still not liked by google.

Currently, I'm rewriting my old SAAS project from React to Go. This means that I need to put it under Cloudflare since it will be deployed with other websites, which are not really white hat ;D. I will see if the google traffic will go to 0 once I switch to cloudflare


I will keep you updated.

 

[OriginWorld]

I can confirm 100% that CF is sometimes interfering with G spiders....I noticed this phenomenon when I was trying to map undercover G crawlers....like you said small websites should avoid CF and rely only on good hosting with good DDoS protection and other goodies.

Do you think its enough to disable waf rulse/ bot protection or should I completely disable cloudflare? I'm using cloudflare mostly as proxy and for the easier waf rules.

BTW I noticed that Cloudflare adds a good amount of latency to requests. Which also isn't great for crawlers.

 

[charman]

I’ve heard others say the same. Sometimes Cloudflare’s security settings or caching can mess with rankings. Maybe try tweaking bot settings or caching rules?

 

[openallmylinks]

It makes your website faster, so no. It should improve your SEO.

 

[stepson]

I used the free version and my Google serp results went down. I turned it off and it got better in a few weeks. I think I need to go premium

 

[RayChand]

Why don't you just run it for sometime without cloudflare ? If anything, you eliminate one reason for the drop in rankings.

 

[Ectophor]

I don't know if I'm crazy, but it looks like Cloudflare is hurting my Google rankings.

I have websites with and without Cloudflare and it's noticeable that the cloudflare one's don't really get impressions or ranking on Google. Even my non-cloudflare website, which only has a landing page for a future SAAS gets a lot more impressions and clicks.
I checked if Google bots get blocked, but I didn't find anything wrong. Google bots can successfully crawl my pages. GSC also has no errors in any of those websites.

Did you have similar experience and if yes, how did you solve it?

I had experience blocking Google bots with a self-written script, but my traffic dropped almost 2-3 times, and continued to drop. There are many sites with Cloudflare and I have no problems.

 

[XrumerGeek]

We use Cloudflare on all our properties and are unware of any negative impacts, for many years.

I'd leen towards a positive impact (if any +/-) due to enhanced security. Google is likely to look favourably on this.

 

[pankajjangir]

No. Check the top ranking sites on Google. You will see most of them are using Cloudflare (you can verify through DNS).

 

[OriginWorld]

Why don't you just run it for sometime without cloudflare ? If anything, you eliminate one reason for the drop in rankings.

I have a few adult websites running on the same server as my normal ones. I don't want to leak my server and if I turn off the proxy I would need to reconfigure the ssl certificate

 

[jyciap11]

I have a few adult websites running on the same server as my normal ones. I don't want to leak my server and if I turn off the proxy I would need to reconfigure the ssl certificate

Be careful to keep multiple sites of the same niche (even in different languages) under cloudflare (even worse if it's the same cloudflare account, with the same nameservers). I've had sites penalized after a few days for months believing the problem was the text, the niche, the AI. The problem was that as soon as I bought the domain I immediately put them on cloudflare, where the nameservers are the same. I tried changing the nameservers (so making more cloudflare accounts), but the IP addresses are still incredibly similar. So I stopped using it. I have always used cloudflare not for security, but to mask the real IP address from google to avoid mass penalties in the same hosting server, but instead I got the opposite effect LOL.
Chatgpt explained to me that Google SpamBrain is responsible for finding exactly this: similarities between sites, things in common, etc. Same niche + cloudflare just added to a new site + the same or similar dns = automatic penalization.
Try it, take 10 sites under cloudflare, go to whatsmydns and check the IP addresses. Often they match (same exact IP address), other times they are really, really similar.

 

[walangalam2]

OP I have a good news for you, the WAF rule that you shared, it worked. One of my websites that has disappeared completely in SERP for months has reappeared and it's already high ranking.

 

[OriginWorld]

Be careful to keep multiple sites of the same niche (even in different languages) under cloudflare (even worse if it's the same cloudflare account, with the same nameservers). I've had sites penalized after a few days for months believing the problem was the text, the niche, the AI. The problem was that as soon as I bought the domain I immediately put them on cloudflare, where the nameservers are the same. I tried changing the nameservers (so making more cloudflare accounts), but the IP addresses are still incredibly similar. So I stopped using it. I have always used cloudflare not for security, but to mask the real IP address from google to avoid mass penalties in the same hosting server, but instead I got the opposite effect LOL.
Chatgpt explained to me that Google SpamBrain is responsible for finding exactly this: similarities between sites, things in common, etc. Same niche + cloudflare just added to a new site + the same or similar dns = automatic penalization.
Try it, take 10 sites under cloudflare, go to whatsmydns and check the IP addresses. Often they match (same exact IP address), other times they are really, really similar.

What service did you use instead? I need to hide some of my website and only Cloudflare seems to be free and popular

 

[jyciap11]

What service did you use instead? I need to hide some of my website and only Cloudflare seems to be free and popular

Nothing, I just switched to my hosting nameserver. I only checked online if the IP it's safe or marked as spam before switch (I'm on shared plan).

 

[911Proxy support]

You're not crazy—some users have reported ranking and indexing issues when using Cloudflare, but it's not universal. Since you've already confirmed that Googlebot isn't blocked and GSC shows no errors

 

[laur.laurix]

Do you think its enough to disable waf rulse/ bot protection or should I completely disable cloudflare? I'm using cloudflare mostly as proxy and for the easier waf rules.

BTW I noticed that Cloudflare adds a good amount of latency to requests. Which also isn't great for crawlers.

If it's not really needed I would disable CF completely.

 

[johnbennett]

I've never had issues with Cloudflare; it's a mandatory step in my website setup workflow. It's probably the ''settings'' that is hurting your SEO. Follow the set up tutorial in YouTube shared by ''Knowledge By Marcus''.

 

[GoogSEO]

I don't know if I'm crazy, but it looks like Cloudflare is hurting my Google rankings.

I have websites with and without Cloudflare and it's noticeable that the cloudflare one's don't really get impressions or ranking on Google. Even my non-cloudflare website, which only has a landing page for a future SAAS gets a lot more impressions and clicks.
I checked if Google bots get blocked, but I didn't find anything wrong. Google bots can successfully crawl my pages. GSC also has no errors in any of those websites.

Did you have similar experience and if yes, how did you solve it?

CDNs, public ns-servers, hosting provider and domain registrar stubs - all of this is harmful and accounted for by Google.
It always has been, now it's even more taken into account. There are points about cdn in the Google algorithm leak, they are neutralizing for other upvotes. So, Cloudflare isn't explicitly harming your site, it's just canceling out the boosts your sites would have gotten.