Does Cloudflare hurt Google SEO?

OriginWorld

OriginWorld

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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?
 
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CPANathan said:
If anything a CDN would benefit everything, did you configure Cloudflare after hooking it up?
Click to expand...
Yeah, I configured everything. I even set up custom WAF rules to bypass good crawlers and bots.
It just doesn't make sense, theoretically It should benefit my SEO since I'm saving a lot of bandwidth by blocking all the bad bots and large providers
 
OriginWorld said:
Yeah, I configured everything. I even set up custom WAF rules to bypass good crawlers and bots.
It just doesn't make sense, theoretically It should benefit my SEO since I'm saving a lot of bandwidth by blocking all the bad bots and large providers
Click to expand...
That really doesn't make sense... Where is your traffic from and where are your CDN servers located can you tell me man?
 
It shouldn't. In theory it should make it faster and rank slightly better.

However a few things to check for...

Make sure you have no weird SSL related redirects or page rules that might cause unnecessary redirects.

I used to hear stories of people saying it had impacted their rankings because they were in bad IP neighbourhood so that might be worth checking but I've not seen that in literally years.
 
CPANathan said:
That really doesn't make sense... Where is your traffic from and where are your CDN servers located can you tell me man?
Click to expand...
Most of my traffic is from the US. I don't know where the Cloudflare servers are located, but my server is hosted in the Netherlands.


jamie3000 said:
It shouldn't. In theory it should make it faster and rank slightly better.

However a few things to check for...

Make sure you have no weird SSL related redirects or page rules that might cause unnecessary redirects.

I used to hear stories of people saying it had impacted their rankings because they were in bad IP neighbourhood so that might be worth checking but I've not seen that in literally years.
Click to expand...
There are no weird redirect. The only "page rule" I have is the default cloudflare redirect from www to non-www, but this shouldn't nuke my websites.
2 of my websites are using the cloudflare origin certificates, the other ones are using let's encrypt.

I find it crazy that a stupid under construction website with a mock up landing page gets more impressions and ranking than real content websites.
 
OriginWorld said:
Most of my traffic is from the US. I don't know where the Cloudflare servers are located, but my server is hosted in the Netherlands.
Click to expand...
I hope this is the answer; I've heard of Irish businesses seeing benefits from moving their servers from the likes of the Netherlands and Germany to the UK/Ireland,

I've never actually seen proof of it though; I wonder if the distance between storage systems is causing you an issue?
 
OriginWorld said:
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.
Click to expand...
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.
 
CPANathan said:
I hope this is the answer; I've heard of Irish businesses seeing benefits from moving their servers from the likes of the Netherlands and Germany to the UK/Ireland,

I've never actually seen proof of it though; I wonder if the distance between storage systems is causing you an issue?
Click to expand...
I also thought about it a lot, and maybe I will do this as a last resort, since it's quite a lot of work to move my servers.

SirLouen said:
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.
Click to expand...
Unfortunately I'm not using the under attack mode :/
 
OriginWorld said:
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?
Click to expand...
You could try turning off some Cloudflare features for a while and see if anything changes

A lot of SEOs use Cloudflare without problems, so the issue is probably in the settings
 
Guys I made a horrific discovery today.

I found out that one of my WAF rules blocks Google Bots.

I got this WAF rule from a popular reddit post. The problem is the ASN 15169, since it belongs to Google. It looks like Cloudflare does not recognize it as a Known Bot nor Verified Bot, which triggers a managed challenge.

I don't know if this is the cause or how much damage it has done, but I know that I had dozens of requests from Google and Playstore blocked.
I hope this could solve my Google problem.

cloudflare.png
 
Cloudflare usually doesn't hurt SEO, but you may have problems due to incorrect settings. Check your bot fighting settings (Super Bot Fight Mode, Firewall Rules), because you may accidentally block Googlebot. Review Cache and Redirect settings, incorrect configurations can lead to indexing issues. Verify how Googlebot is behaving by reviewing the logs. If there is still a noticeable drop, you can temporarily disable Cloudflare for testing and observe the effect.
 
OriginWorld said:
Guys I made a horrific discovery today.

I found out that one of my WAF rules blocks Google Bots.

I got this WAF rule from a popular reddit post. The problem is the ASN 15169, since it belongs to Google. It looks like Cloudflare does not recognize it as a Known Bot nor Verified Bot, which triggers a managed challenge.

I don't know if this is the cause or how much damage it has done, but I know that I had dozens of requests from Google and Playstore blocked.
I hope this could solve my Google problem.

View attachment 430242
Click to expand...
That was probably the reason. Because I know CF when properly configured should generally rather improve your SEO. I hope your site will start to be better indexed in google again.
 
No, Cloudflare does not inherently hurt SEO—when configured correctly, it can actually improve performance and security, which are ranking factors. However, misconfigurations can cause issues.
 
OriginWorld said:
Guys I made a horrific discovery today.

I found out that one of my WAF rules blocks Google Bots.

I got this WAF rule from a popular reddit post. The problem is the ASN 15169, since it belongs to Google. It looks like Cloudflare does not recognize it as a Known Bot nor Verified Bot, which triggers a managed challenge.

I don't know if this is the cause or how much damage it has done, but I know that I had dozens of requests from Google and Playstore blocked.
I hope this could solve my Google problem.

View attachment 430242
Click to expand...
Can you dm me the reddit post please. I want to read more about it.
 
OriginWorld said:
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?
Click to expand...
Cloudflare itself typically doesn’t hurt rankings, but you should check if its settings are affecting your Google visibility. Ensure that Googlebot isn’t blocked by the firewall or caching settings, as this can hinder crawling. Also, some Cloudflare features can impact page speed, which may affect rankings. Try disabling Cloudflare temporarily to see if rankings improve, and adjust settings accordingly if needed.
 
OriginWorld said:
Guys I made a horrific discovery today.

I found out that one of my WAF rules blocks Google Bots.

I got this WAF rule from a popular reddit post. The problem is the ASN 15169, since it belongs to Google. It looks like Cloudflare does not recognize it as a Known Bot nor Verified Bot, which triggers a managed challenge.

I don't know if this is the cause or how much damage it has done, but I know that I had dozens of requests from Google and Playstore blocked.
I hope this could solve my Google problem.

View attachment 430242
Click to expand...
I think this is the reason. CF is very big tool and i have used it in lot of big orgs sites. I see no negative because of using cf. I do have a theory that google gives +1 to security you are using. Because, google wants secure sites on the web.
 
Cloudflare host many site under the same IP. So draw your own conclusions.

Add new fresh domain under CF will expose you to an almost certain penalty.
 
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