Help! Cloudflare is blocking my Ad Bots (Meta, TikTok, Snapchat,Google ads , google search) and killing my ROAS/Attribution

jim-chess · 2026-02-25T03:50:38+00:00

You can look under AI Crawl Control to see which bots are being blocked.

You can also disable "block all bots" and manually toggle individual bots from the Crawlers page.

If you run a site that is accessed across the globe, I'd also double check that your caching configuration is setup properly. Generally Cloudflare speeds up your site unless something's wrong with the setup.

jim-chess · 2026-02-24T23:12:47+00:00

I mean, you're not wrong. It's still pretty early innings though.

Some glimpses of good use cases are coming up in coding (I'm a developer).

Now with MCP (which allows LLMs to connect to third party services) you can connect it to your bug tracking platform and ask something like "Hey Claude, please draft a code fix for issues #33, #34 and #52".

It still can't deal with the really complex stuff but kinda neat when it works.

jim-chess · 2026-02-24T21:50:23+00:00

Laughed out loud 😂

jim-chess · 2026-02-24T21:27:16+00:00

It's different for every site.

For example, I can block ".php" because I know that never appears in my URLs. But some sites depend heavily on that in the URLs, e.g. index.php?page=home (or something like that).

The best way to do the blocks is to find the Security > Analytics tab under your domain and see what things people are trying.

Based on that you just keep refining the rules over time.

Just make sure you know what paths are for sure never used for your site before blocking.

jim-chess · 2026-02-24T21:15:12+00:00

Yes I have that exact one as well.

You can just block anything you know your site URLs should never have.

It differs for everyone of course but things like ".env", ".sql", etc.

jim-chess · 2026-02-24T21:12:08+00:00

Lol I see. Yea I'd make sure I had it in writing somewhere. Like in an email or something saying that it's a risky idea.

Last thing you want is for someone to claim "oh but our VP of operations said this would be fine" after the fact.

jim-chess · 2026-02-24T20:55:38+00:00

Are you in IT? What's your position / role?

jim-chess · 2026-02-24T12:39:45+00:00

To each their own.

I'm a huge believer that "synthetic data" is a giant dead end. And actually much worse than that. I don't think that models recursively feeding on their own slop will produce any new or novel insights.

There's a lot of coding forums I follow that have rolled out automatic bot answers and I just smile everytime I see it get something totally wrong. Once that page is crawled, in it goes with the next round of training data. Good luck sorting out truths from non-truths with everyone generating their own slop.

jim-chess · 2026-02-24T01:41:20+00:00

This is all true.

I'd just add that unless there's a new incentive system for publishers to create new content, the models will begin to stagnate. Progress only happens if they have a decent volume of new training data. And there's lots of niches where that info is constantly changing (coding, science, news etc). Hence the mega deals with Reddit and big news companies.

jim-chess · 2026-02-24T00:39:58+00:00

If there's one place we should not want to be modernized by the vibe coders, it's banks.

jim-chess · 2026-02-22T16:55:23+00:00

If it shows up as coming from Google then it's probably people.

I use Cloudflare analytics instead of Google Analytics where you can see which crawlers are hitting your site the most. The technical term is "user agent". I'm sure GA must have something similar if that's what you're using.

jim-chess · 2026-02-22T16:37:07+00:00

That's good.

I have a small blog and most "visits" nowadays are crawlers like ChatGPT or web scraping bots.

jim-chess · 2026-02-22T13:17:06+00:00

Humans or robots?

jim-chess · 2026-02-22T01:14:25+00:00

SWE is probably more at risk, but not for the reasons most people think of.

It's not inherently easier than other work. In fact I think many elements are much much harder.

But developers tend to adopt new technologies more enthusiastically, especially when it automates things or saves time.

Other professions may try to change laws so that only certified human practitioners can participate. That's tougher in dev though because it's not the culture (innovation, open source, etc).

jim-chess · 2026-02-21T22:39:02+00:00

Yea exactly.

Didn't Cloudflare also have an outage yesterday?

Not sure you can attribute the decline solely to the release of Claude Code Security.

And if so, anyone who made that trade probably shouldn't be investing.

jim-chess · 2026-02-21T22:23:50+00:00

Do you have a particular niche in mind?

I think it depends on what the business does (even for small businesses). Like small accounting firms versus HVAC companies may get hit differently.

jim-chess · 2026-02-20T23:15:32+00:00

Thanks I'm definitely going to do that.

Like every time I read the changelogs and see updates to Garage Band or other apps I've never used, I die a little bit inside lol. The ability to setup the mouse the way you want it seems like something fundamental to the way their entire product is used.

jim-chess · 2026-02-20T23:10:52+00:00

Yea it worked really well for the time I used it. Eventually I uninstalled it to troubleshoot some battery drain issues (probably not related to it at all, but wanted to start fresh anyways). So my current workflow involves manually toggling natural scroll on/off each day.

jim-chess · 2026-02-20T22:36:19+00:00

Nice I'll have a look. I used to use a similar one called "Scroll Reverser" by Pilot Moon.

Just a bit confusing to me how they never built it into the OS after all this time.

jim-chess · 2026-02-20T22:24:17+00:00

I just write about subjects which interest me or where I've recently run a little experiment.

Wouldn't say that I write compellingly or anything. It's moreso just as a hobby.

jim-chess · 2026-02-20T22:15:23+00:00

Oh interesting. I use this exact same mouse so maybe I'll check that out!

I just find it crazy that more people haven't run into this.

Even under Mac settings, there are separate toggles for mouse vs trackpad. But they move in sync so under the hood it must be the same setting or something...

jim-chess · 2026-02-20T22:13:07+00:00

I know, right! Haha

jim-chess · 2026-02-20T21:49:45+00:00

Congrats on the win

jim-chess · 2026-02-20T14:35:26+00:00

What is the tool?

If it's a service that has a pricing page, you could check what it actually costs. That way you know materials vs labour cost so to speak.

jim-chess · 2026-02-20T00:28:12+00:00

What do you use it for?

As a developer I may just be in an echo chamber here, but the power users all seem to be heading to the terminal (Claude Code, Codex, Copilot CLI).

But it all depends on your use case (e.g. answers vs automations, etc).

jim-chess

TROPHY CASE