Cloudflare Guru needed. Too many bots on the website
Budget: $30 – $250 CAD
I run a Canadian real-estate search engine that must stay lightning-fast for genuine home-hunters while remaining fully crawlable by Google, Bing and other reputable AI/search bots. Right now Cloudflare shows ±100 k daily hits from malicious, spam and scraper bots; that traffic spikes the servers, ruins bounce-rate metrics and occasionally knocks the site offline.
I have already:
• Placed the site on Cloudflare,
• Allowed full, captcha-free access for visitors inside Canada,
• Forced most other countries through a captcha,
• Experimented with firewall rules, IP and UA blocking.
Unfortunately, Google’s crawler activity drops whenever the shield becomes too strict, so I’m looking for an expert who can strike the sweet spot: block malicious, spam and scraper bots without hindering search-engine or legitimate users.
What I expect from you
• Audit my current Cloudflare setup (WAF, Bot Management, Firewall Rule sets, Rate Limiting, ASN / Country policies).
• Create or fine-tune rules that:
– keep Canadian users friction-free,
– let Google, Bing and recognised AI crawlers through globally,
– optionally challenge or throttle traffic from other regions only when behaviour appears automated.
• Implement practical monitoring so I can track bot mitigation effectiveness and crawler health in real time (Cloudflare Analytics, Google Search Console, GA4 events).
• Leave me with concise documentation of the rules you add or change, plus a rollback note in case we need to revert.
Acceptance criteria
1. Google Search Console shows normal crawl stats for at least 48 h after changes.
2. Cloudflare analytics indicate a measurable drop in malicious, spam and scraper activity.
3. Legitimate Canadian visitors no longer report captchas or blocked pages.
If you have solid experience tuning Cloudflare for high-traffic sites and can schedule a quick turnaround, I’d love to get started.
I have already:
• Placed the site on Cloudflare,
• Allowed full, captcha-free access for visitors inside Canada,
• Forced most other countries through a captcha,
• Experimented with firewall rules, IP and UA blocking.
Unfortunately, Google’s crawler activity drops whenever the shield becomes too strict, so I’m looking for an expert who can strike the sweet spot: block malicious, spam and scraper bots without hindering search-engine or legitimate users.
What I expect from you
• Audit my current Cloudflare setup (WAF, Bot Management, Firewall Rule sets, Rate Limiting, ASN / Country policies).
• Create or fine-tune rules that:
– keep Canadian users friction-free,
– let Google, Bing and recognised AI crawlers through globally,
– optionally challenge or throttle traffic from other regions only when behaviour appears automated.
• Implement practical monitoring so I can track bot mitigation effectiveness and crawler health in real time (Cloudflare Analytics, Google Search Console, GA4 events).
• Leave me with concise documentation of the rules you add or change, plus a rollback note in case we need to revert.
Acceptance criteria
1. Google Search Console shows normal crawl stats for at least 48 h after changes.
2. Cloudflare analytics indicate a measurable drop in malicious, spam and scraper activity.
3. Legitimate Canadian visitors no longer report captchas or blocked pages.
If you have solid experience tuning Cloudflare for high-traffic sites and can schedule a quick turnaround, I’d love to get started.