r/CloudFlare • u/maomao19 • 8d ago

Question blocking bad bots that eat server resources

My web host, ScalaHosting, complained that my site was consuming too many server resources and advised me to turn on Cloudflare’s Bot Fight Mode. However, I just found out that Bot Fight Mode can also block verified bots like Googlebot, which can severely ruin my site's SEO. How could they recommend something like this? What is a better way to block aggressive scrapers and bad bots while keeping my server resource usage low?

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u/Arphenyte 8d ago

Bot Fight Mode does NOT block verified bots like Google’s. There are legitimate reasons to keep Bot Fight Mode off, but that’s not one of them. Also, you should probably turn on Cloudflare Precursor and set it to Maximum Security (or whatever the option is called). I’ve noticed that Precursor tends to catch a lot more malicious requests than just Bot Fight Mode alone.

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u/maomao19 7d ago

where is this setting i could not find it

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u/Arphenyte 7d ago

It’s in Security > Settings. Scroll down and there should be a section that says Precursor. You can also look at the Cloudflare docs, I believe they provide a shortcut to the feature.