Cloudflare affects SEO?

[MohdAzim]

Hi Everyone.

I was planning to migrate my website to cloudflare for getting DDOS prevention and other benefits.

Also, I planned to block the countries where we do not do the business. However, can anyone please confirm if the effects using Cloudfare has on website and search engine performance? I have read in multiple places that adding the extra line of defense against foreign countries accessing the site can hinder our Google performance locally and the ability of true customers to find our website.
I have read that using services such as Cloudfare can negatively impact your SEO, as Google will rank you lower on search results when there are additional layers to pass through to get through to your website content. I'm not sure how true that is, but I've found a few forums discussing this.
Please suggest and thank you in advance.

[phranque]

welcome to WebmasterWorld [webmasterworld.com], MohdAzim!

here's a WebmasterWorld thread from a few years ago discussing this subject:
Does Cloudflare hurt Google rankings? [webmasterworld.com]

[MohdAzim]

Hi, I read everything but there is still some confusion regarding drop in tarffic in early stage and I want to know about the same.

So if you read the thread, you will see that everyone faced drop initialy after moving to CF but later it was well. But , how can I avoid early stage drop ?

Kindly suggest.

[robzilla]

Well, it depends on what you consider "foreign". You'll want to make sure the search engine crawlers can access your site. So a business in France would not want to block traffic from the US, because that's where Google crawls from.

You're giving away control of traffic flow to some extent, so you'll want to make sure you configure Cloudflare properly, and that you understand what the service is doing. It's often simply slapped onto a site thinking it will make everything safer, better and faster, but that's not necessarily the case.

However, considering the number of sites that employ Cloudflare and continue to do well, I wouldn't be too worried about it.

See this post, for example: [webmasterworld.com...]

[robzilla]

So if you read the thread, you will see that everyone faced drop initialy after moving to CF but later it was well. But , how can I avoid early stage drop ?

Not everyone, see the last two posts in that thread.

You may notice a temporary drop in crawl rate, because when Google sees you're switching hosting they want to be extra careful so as not to cause any disturbance in the process. But if implemented properly there should be no effect on rankings.

[MohdAzim]

That's really helpful and when you say that I should configure CF correctly than I would really appreciate if you can share any link where I can find what is a proper way to configure the CF.

Also, I will keeping only USA allowed to access my website and the rest will be blocked in CF. Will that make any issue ?

Looking forward to a great help.

[not2easy]

You should understand your traffic before blocking wide chunks of the internet. If your site relies on suppliers or services that are not in your "allowed" area you may find that some parts of your site can have trouble. Block with a light touch and when you make changes, keep records so you can check there if/when you find something is not working as expected. If you have not looked at your access logs to understand where unwanted traffic is coming from it might pay you to become familiar with your traffic before wholesale blocking.

Cloudflare can be very beneficial - or not. There is not a standard to-do list in setting it up for your site's optimal performance. For example, Cloudflare offers help for WP users to know how to configure for specific plugins. But there is no list of what to do for everyone. You will need to learn to use Cloudflare's features to benefit your site's needs.

A starting point is the Cloudflare developers community: https://developers.cloudflare.com/

[NickMNS]

I have read that using services such as Cloudfare can negatively impact your SEO...

Cloudflare should have no effect on "SEO".

...as Google will rank you lower on search results when there are additional layers to pass through to get through to your website content.

First what are the "layers it passes through"? Are you referring to redirects, then yes too many redirects can be a problem, but there are no redirects when it comes to Cloudflare. It is a proxy server, essentially a server that sits between your server and the internet. Google only sees the server that connects you to the internet. Your could install 100 proxies between you and the internet and Google would only ever see the one that connects to the internet. So adding Cloudflare is not an issue in that respect.

What Google does care about is speed, and Cloudflare provides two benefits, protection against security risk like DDoS attacks and increased speed through caching and other features. So if anything Cloudflare can make your site faster which will be beneficial in terms of Google.

I should configure CF correctly than I would really appreciate if you can share any link where I can find what is a proper way to configure the CF

There is no "proper configuration", as the configuration needs to be done to your specific needs. Also your needs and thus configuration may change over time. The best approach is to start with a basic configuration and then add features one at a time, see the impact of the change and then try the next thing.

[KaseyM]

In theory, a properly configured CloudFlare setup should IMPROVE your rankings as it should improve speed.

[Pjman]

Having transferred over 30 sites over to Cloudflare, I have only seen positive impacts on SEO and performance.

I was hesitant to transfer from seeing a few old articles about 4-5 years ago. But like everything SEO that is 4-5 years old, it's outdated and no longer holds any merit.

[Kendo]

a properly configured CloudFlare setup should IMPROVE your rankings as it should improve speed.

Why not run Nginx on your own server for free?

[Dimitri]

Peace first.

Then

Why not run Nginx on your own server for free?

That. +1

Cloudflare services are great, there is everything, for all kind of usage and budget, that is really good, and ready to use. However, by delegating your front end to a third party, you are also no longer fully in control of your site.

There are good DDos-protected hosting offers, we can't mention them here, but you can look at the top hosters, and see that some have really great DDos protection, and prices for all kind of budget.

But it's sure that it might requires skills and knowledge, to block IP by country, and so on.

From a SEO point of view, I doubt that it really impacts your ranking, positively or negatively,

[NickMNS]

How can you say this:

However, by delegating your front end to a third party, you are also no longer fully in control of your site.

and then follow up with:

There are good DDos-protected hosting offers

How is using Cloudflare for DDoS protection any different to using a service provided by your host? In both cases you are delegating to a third party.

The unfortunate reality is that you can't be great at doing everything, and at some point you need to delegate tasks to others. I prefer to spend my time focused on what I do best and then as much as possible delegate the rest. In my case, I focus on building websites/web-app and content. The fact that companies like Cloudflare exist is a big help, and it helps me achieve things that would not be possible without them. I have used their free service for years and I have never had a problem. There are other companies that offer similar services, I believe that they are competitively priced and offer equal services, (not sure about the free tier).

I will add one last point, there are services that Cloudflare provides that you cannot achieve on your own. One such example is hiding the IP of your web-server. To effectively do this you need a proxy that is shared by many other sites, otherwise your proxy's IP is just as vulnerable as your web-server's IP given its one to one relationship to you.

[aristotle]

Is there some particular reason why you're worried about DDOS attacks?

Also, If you want your traffic to come from a certain country, you should design it to cater to people living in that country. Most likely you will also get a scattering of traffic from all over the world, but for ordinary sites that isn't likely to cause any significant problems.

[Dimitri]

How is using Cloudflare for DDoS protection any different to using a service provided by your host? In both cases you are delegating to a third party.

I misused the word delegating.

[Kendo]

In some cases using Cloudfare and expecting improved pagespeed can be a disappointment. If your site is using static pages or pages that can be cached by Cloudfare, then there may be a performance increase.

But if your web pages are dynamically delivered from your server, and especially if unique to each user, then I would not expect an improvement in performance, because Cloudfare first has to get your page and then deliver it... so 2 page requests are in play here, right?