Cloudflare and Google - Horrible results.

RuthSam

RuthSam

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Hi,

We tested cloudflare with 2 different websites on 2 different hosts.

After the switch to cloudflare.com our ranking is going down we went from 3 -4 position to 10 - 13 and Google deindexed more than 2000 pages (out of 17000) on one of the sites.

After we changed the first website back to not use cloudflare, the ranking is increasing again and we are where we were before the switch to cloudflare.

Question is, do you have seen the same or what is your experience with cloudflare?
 
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How long did it take for your rankings to climb again once you saw the dip and made the switch? As always, there could be a number of factors at play but I'm willing to experiment with one of my money sites and report back.
 
Oh sh-t, I'm using CloudFlare too! Maybe in your case the Google crawlers could not access your site and were instead being blocked by CloudFlare's security system or reaching the CloudFlare default "page is down" page? I did not notice ranking changes personally, but then I wasn't even considering it as a possible factor so there may have been changes I wasn't aware of.

Hopefully some more people can chip in.
 
If using WP make sure their plugin is installed and active.
 
I had a wordpress membersite and after i moved it to cloudflare everything got messed up from images and member plugins to ranking..
 
myopic1 said:
How long did it take for your rankings to climb again once you saw the dip and made the switch? As always, there could be a number of factors at play but I'm willing to experiment with one of my money sites and report back.
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Yeah I'm also not sure that it is really cloudflare, but after I switched back the first site it took only 4 - 5 days and it was back to where it was before cloudflare. And this even during the period where it seems Google is doing the Algo update.
 
RuthSam said:
Yeah I'm also not sure that it is really cloudflare, but after I switched back the first site it took only 4 - 5 days and it was back to where it was before cloudflare. And this even during the period where it seems Google is doing the Algo update.
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I've switched my nameservers on a money site that's been CloudFlare from the beginning, it's better to be sure than not to be. It would be a major oversight on their part if it is a crawl error though, although after a quick Google, there have been reported instances in the past.

I'll give in around 10 days and let you know.
 
I'm going to also test this out since I;ve been having ranking issue with one of my niche sites that is using cloudflare. Will report back.
 
I would be very surprised if your poor rankings related to CF in any way.

I use CF on ALL my money sites, and I have never had the issues you describe. Even after switching old sites that had ranked for 12-18mths to CF, I never had ranking drops.
 
It could be that your right tony_d this site is 7 years old, was ranking just great until last week where we switched to cloudflare.. this could of course be a coincident with the Google algo update that is going on too, but that would be strange. The last time there was a algo update this site passed just fine.

Anyway, I switched the name servers, so we will have to see. The other site where we switched back the name servers(without using cloudflare) is ranking fine again now!
 
Well F*ck me, one of my niche sites has been stuck at 13 for 2 month... I disabled cloudflare about 5 hours ago and refreshed my rankings just now and that 13 is now at 11.... I'll keep an eye on it to make sure it's not a coincidence but that's very weird.
 
hmmm strokey beard time.... Please do keep us updated would genuinely like to see if it does make a difference or not. (i use CF all the time)
 
I actually cant imagine cloudflare hurting rankings.

I am using it on a few low ranked Wordpress blogs for the https but have no similar blogs running without CF to compare.

Please keep us updated!
 
I'll disable it on a few of my other sites and see what happens while I'm sleeping, Yeah I couldn't image CF messing with rankings
 
Have you checked the load speed of your site on pingdom? When I switched one of my sites to cloudflare, my website speed actually dropped from <1s to over 3-5s. Not sure why cloudflare made my site slower, but I noticed conversions dropping and checked into it. I didn't actually lose any rankings from making the switch though.
 
crazedspyker said:
Have you checked the load speed of your site on pingdom? When I switched one of my sites to cloudflare, my website speed actually dropped from <1s to over 3-5s. Not sure why cloudflare made my site slower, but I noticed conversions dropping and checked into it. I didn't actually lose any rankings from making the switch though.
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Thia I can only confirm, I have seen similar things, but thought it was just me! CF is really messing up your websites it seems.. just crazy because they grow that big in that little of time.
 
True but not sure whether the serp goes down but if it is true, time to change my domain nameservers from CF to my host nameservers!!!

RuthSam said:
Thia I can only confirm, I have seen similar things, but thought it was just me! CF is really messing up your websites it seems.. just crazy because they grow that big in that little of time.
Click to expand...
 
crazedspyker said:
Have you checked the load speed of your site on pingdom? When I switched one of my sites to cloudflare, my website speed actually dropped from <1s to over 3-5s. Not sure why cloudflare made my site slower, but I noticed conversions dropping and checked into it. I didn't actually lose any rankings from making the switch though.
Click to expand...

That was my feelings when I read this although cf is supposed to speed things up, it might not in all cases, I would be shocked though if a totally front end site with very little coding slowed down, I am wondering if the backend of WordPress and the likes is what is slowing the cf sites down.
 
Not sure, but BHW was using CF for some time as well, I don't think they are using it any longer, there must be a reason for it if it is so!
 
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