Effective Date: 8/18/2026

Applies To: All websites hosted on our platform

Overview

Automated programs — commonly called “bots” — account for a significant share of all internet traffic. Some bots are essential to your business, such as the search engine crawlers that keep your website visible on Google and Bing. Others exist to scrape your content, probe for security vulnerabilities, or overload your site with junk traffic.

To protect your website and keep it performing at its best, we actively manage bot traffic. This policy explains how we do that, and why.

Our Approach

We take a default-deny stance on bot traffic: unless a bot is recognized and serves a legitimate purpose, it is blocked. Within that framework, we apply the following rules:

1. Search Engine (SEO) Bots — Fully Allowed

Crawlers from legitimate search engines (such as Googlebot and Bingbot) are permitted to access your entire website without restriction. These bots are how search engines discover, index, and rank your pages. Allowing them full access ensures your site remains visible in search results and that your SEO investment is protected.

A note on third-party SEO tools: If you use an SEO auditing or optimization tool (such as a site checker or rank tracker), it may report that your website is blocking crawlers. This is expected. These tools use their own bots — not real search engine crawlers — and those bots may fall under our default-deny rules. A “blocked” result from an SEO tool does not mean Google or Bing is blocked; the actual, verified search engine crawlers always have full access to your site.

2. AI Bots — Allowed, Except on Product Pages

Crawlers operated by AI companies are permitted to access your website's general content, but are blocked from your product pages. This balanced approach means your business can still be discovered and referenced by AI-powered search and assistant tools, while your product catalog — including pricing, descriptions, and imagery — is protected from bulk collection and reuse without consent.

3. Known Malicious Bots — Always Blocked

Bots identified as malicious are blocked from your website entirely, with no exceptions. This includes bots associated with content scraping, spam, credential stuffing, vulnerability scanning, and other abusive behavior. Our block lists are maintained against current threat intelligence and updated on an ongoing basis.

4. Unrecognized Bots — Blocked by Default

Any bot that we cannot identify or verify is blocked by default. Legitimate bot operators identify themselves and can be verified; those that don't are treated as untrusted until proven otherwise.

Why Block by Default? Attackers Hide Behind “Good” Bots

One of the most common tactics attackers use is disguising malicious traffic as a legitimate bot. A scraper or attack tool can claim to be Googlebot, an AI crawler, or any other well-known service simply by copying its name — and unmanaged websites will let it right through.

This is why a default-deny stance is essential. We don't take a bot's word for what it is; unrecognized or unverifiable bots are blocked, and only bots that can be confirmed as legitimate are allowed access.

It is also a key reason AI bots are blocked from product pages. Product catalogs — pricing, inventory, descriptions, and imagery — are the highest-value target on a commerce website, and bot traffic claiming to be an AI crawler is a frequent cover for competitive price scraping and bulk data harvesting. Restricting that traffic at the page level protects your most sensitive business data even when a bot appears legitimate on the surface.

Why We Do This

For your protection. Unmanaged bot traffic exposes your website to content theft, price scraping by competitors, spam submissions, and probing attacks that seek out security weaknesses. By filtering this traffic before it reaches your site, we reduce your exposure to these risks.

For your website's performance. Every request a bot makes consumes server resources and bandwidth. High volumes of unwanted bot traffic slow page load times for your real visitors, inflate hosting costs, and distort your analytics — making it harder to understand how actual customers use your site. Blocking unwanted bots keeps your website fast and your data accurate.

This policy is subject to change as the bot landscape evolves. Material updates will be communicated to customers.