A few days ago, I saw some of my sites lost ranking out of nowhere. As I was concerned, I checked analytics, performed searches, kept thinking of changes I've recently made with DNS settings, and added WAF security using Cloudflare. I usually don't think traffic from some sources is relevant to me, so I keep the bots and unknown users away. After a few weeks of my research, here is a quick answer I've found it makes sense to me & keeps google and other known bots happy with my sites.
I followed the following steps to rectify the issue.
- Let's look at a few things before you add Cloudflare to your site. Make sure to add the correct DNS on your Domain Servier Provider (DSP).
- Adding my current requirements or audience to the site, and make sure I am blocking other bots
- The third is to add "Known Bots" to your list, because Google, Bing & DuckDuckGo bots are knowns to Cloudflare, and will not block them. (See pic above)
That's it for a weekly nugget this week. Hope you've an awesome day!