New controls and recommended settings go live today, allowing publishers and businesses to independently control how their content is used across search, AI training, and AI agents. Leading mixed-use crawlers already offer or are building controls that honor these choices. 

Sydney, Australia — September 16, 2026 — Cloudflare, Inc. (NYSE: NET), the leading connectivity cloud company, today announced a new Accountable designation for AI crawling. In conjunction with this, Cloudflare launched Disallow AI Training, a setting that lets any website refuse AI training while staying fully in search results. Eleven weeks ago Cloudflare said website owners deserved real control over how AI uses their content, and set out what crawler operators would have to provide to earn continued access. Apple, Google, and Microsoft are now labeled as Accountable and have shown that they meet these criteria or have given specific timelines to meet them. Other mixed-use crawlers are blocked if site owners Block Training. 

For nearly thirty years the deal between crawlers and website owners was simple: they crawl you, and they send traffic back. AI changed the terms. Mixed-use crawlers, one crawler collecting content for both a search index and AI training, now make up 36.6% of verified crawler traffic on Cloudflare’s network, the single largest category. Most website owners still want to be found: fewer than 1% block search crawlers, while 17% restrict AI training. Until today, refusing the training meant losing the search from crawlers that lacked the proper controls. 

“This is how we make the Internet better: preserving the openness that makes search valuable while giving the people and businesses behind the web meaningful control over how their work is used,” said Matthew Prince, co-founder and CEO of Cloudflare. “We look forward to continued collaborative engagement with companies like Apple, Google, and Microsoft as we work together to build a healthy ecosystem.” 

Mixed-use crawlers were the hardest part of the AI training problem. AI summaries are next: every operator Cloudflare designates as Accountable must give site owners a way to opt out of AI summaries. Today that is a yes-or-no choice, set with each operator individually. By early next year, Cloudflare’s goal is to let site owners control how much of their content is included, in one place. 

New Controls, New Recommendations 

Cloudflare is replacing its “Block AI Bots” switch with three independent controls: one for search, one for AI training, and one for AI agents. New websites on Cloudflare will now see proposed recommended settings tailored to their business model: 

  • Sites that carry advertising: search crawling is on, AI training is disallowed, and AI agents are blocked on ad-carrying pages. 
  • All other sites: search, AI training, and AI agents are all allowed, consistent with how most non-ad-supported websites already operate. 

Cloudflare is also replacing its “Managed Robots.txt” feature with “Bot Preference Sync,” which lets site owners set their crawling preferences once and applies them across all supported crawlers automatically. Customers can easily change their settings and preferences at any time. 

Accountable AI Crawling 

Cloudflare established clear criteria for accountable, transparent AI crawling, including for mixed-use crawlers. There are four requirements that operators must either meet or commit to meet within a specified timeline: 

  • Giving site owners a clear way to opt out of AI training through robots.txt or a comparable standard 
  • Allowing site owners to opt out of AI-generated search summaries 
  • Providing site owners with URL-level visibility into how their content is used for search and training 
  • Publicly confirming that opting out of training will not affect a site’s ranking in traditional search 

Apple, Google, and Microsoft have demonstrated that they meet these criteria. For example, Google offers Google-Extended, a control that enables sites to opt out of training without opting out of Search, and announced new tools earlier this year to help website owners navigate AI in search. Other leading AI companies operate separate crawlers for search and training. This allows Cloudflare to block their training crawlers without affecting search, so Cloudflare also categorises the relevant crawlers as Accountable. Cloudflare publishes the full list of qualifying operators on Cloudflare Radar. 

Cloudflare is also an active participant in open standards work at the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), including “ai-prefs,” a specification under development that would allow any website to express its AI access preferences in a standardised, portable way. Today’s controls are designed to work alongside these emerging standards. 

To learn more about Cloudflare’s approach to AI and content control, please visit the following resources: 

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