AISearchExternal is a bot in the AI search crawlers category, operated by Cloudflare.
Cloudflare AI Search is a managed service that lets you connect your data and easily build AI-powered search.
AI search crawlers index pages so that AI answer engines can cite and link to them in their responses. Blocking them removes your pages from those answers, so many sites allow them while blocking training crawlers.
AISearchExternal identifies itself with this user agent string:
Cloudflare-AI-Search-External (https://developers.cloudflare.com/ai-search; [email protected])Anyone can copy a user agent string. Transfon Security also checks where each request comes from, so a request that claims to be a known crawler but comes from the wrong network is treated as a fake, not as the real crawler.
We have not confirmed whether AISearchExternal follows robots.txt. Add a rule, then check your logs to see that it stopped. robots.txt is a plain text file at the root of your domain, such as https://example.com/robots.txt.
User-agent: Cloudflare-AI-Search-External Disallow: /
User-agent: Cloudflare-AI-Search-External Disallow: /private/ Disallow: /search
User-agent: Cloudflare-AI-Search-External Allow: /blog/ Disallow: /
User-agent: Cloudflare-AI-Search-External Allow: / User-agent: * Disallow: /
User-agent: Cloudflare-AI-Search-External group, AISearchExternal ignores your User-agent: * rules, so repeat any that should still apply.Cloudflare-AI-Search-External from AISearchExternal's user agent; check Cloudflare's own documentation if it publishes a different robots.txt name.Treat robots.txt as a statement of your policy, and enforce it where requests arrive.
AISearchExternal decides whether AI answers cite and link your articles. Many publishers allow it while blocking training crawlers, and rate limit it so it does not crowd out readers.
Transfon Security for publishersAI search can send visitors to your landing pages. Keep AISearchExternal's own visits out of campaign reports so you can measure the real referrals.
Transfon Security for advertisersBeing indexed by AISearchExternal can put your products in AI shopping answers. Allow it on product and category pages, and keep it off cart, checkout and account pages.
Transfon Security for e-commerceLetting AISearchExternal index docs and pricing pages helps AI answers describe your product correctly. Keep it away from login and API endpoints.
Transfon Security for SaaS and APIsrobots.txt is a request, not an enforcement. Transfon Security shows AISearchExternal by name in the Top Bots report, so you can see how often it visits and which pages it reads. Block or allow it with a User Agent rule, or slow it down with a rate limit decision rule.
Transfon Security
AISearchExternal is a bot in the AI search crawlers category, operated by Cloudflare. Cloudflare AI Search is a managed service that lets you connect your data and easily build AI-powered search.
We have not confirmed whether AISearchExternal follows robots.txt. Add a robots.txt rule, then check your logs to see that it stopped, and block it by user agent if it did not.
Add "User-agent: Cloudflare-AI-Search-External" followed by "Disallow: /" to the robots.txt file at the root of your site. To enforce it, block requests whose user agent contains "Cloudflare-AI-Search-External" at your WAF. In Transfon Security that is one User Agent block rule.
No. robots.txt is voluntary, so AISearchExternal may not follow it, and anyone can send AISearchExternal's user agent, so a fake AISearchExternal ignores your rule. Enforce the rule where requests arrive, at your WAF, and check the source network.
AI search crawlers index pages so that AI answer engines can cite and link to them in their responses. Blocking them removes your pages from those answers, so many sites allow them while blocking training crawlers.
Transfon Security identifies every bot in this directory in your traffic reports, flags fake search crawlers, and lets you allow, block or rate limit each bot.
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