Check your Cloudflare settings, Google may be blocked
Cloudflare started blocking Google by default on September 15, and its own CEO says that breaks search rankings. If your site sits behind Cloudflare, this is a five minute check worth doing today.
Read the whole week in one goSpam update done, penalties up, trackers unreliable
Why your traffic moved
Google scores pages on effort, and effort is not hours
Google appears to score how much real effort went into a page, and leaked Google API documents name two measures for it, contentEffort and ugcDiscussionEffortScore. Cyrus Shepard says high effort pages carry things automation cannot copy, like original facts from your own experience and your own opinions.
Effort is not how much work you actually put into a page. It’s more about the evidence of useful work that ends up on the final page.
Who this affects: Anyone publishing articles, especially with AI help.
- Add one original fact or firsthand example to each key page.
- Our take: state a clear opinion instead of summarising what competitors say.
Getting into AI answers
ChatGPT is pulling answers from your other site sections
One SEO says ChatGPT is running more site: searches (searches limited to one website), so your subdomains (separate sections like help.yoursite.com) now feed its answers. Lily Ray suggests listing every subdomain you have and deciding whether you want that content available to AI tools, naming staging sites as an example.
Who this affects: Site owners with help centres, docs, forums or test sites on subdomains.
- List your subdomains and block any test or staging sites.
- Reread your help centre pages for outdated product claims.
Do not do this
Your security service may be blocking Google by default
Cloudflare (a service many sites use for speed and security) switched to blocking Google by default on September 15, so pages behind it can stop being found. Glenn Gabe flagged it after Cloudflare's CEO said blocking Google breaks search ranking, and pointed to Cloudflare's own post. Not every Cloudflare site is blocking Google, but check your settings now.
Cloudflare switched to blocking Google by default on 9/15 so you should check your settings
Who this affects: Anyone whose website runs behind Cloudflare.
- Open your Cloudflare dashboard and confirm Google crawlers are allowed.
- Then check Search Console for new crawl or indexing errors.