Cloudflare adds trust scoring for Verified bots based on robots.txt and HTTP 429 compliance
Overview
Cloudflare says it is introducing a system that scores how consistently Verified bots respect robots.txt and respond to HTTP 429 signals, producing an explainable trust band over time.
The scoring measures whether bot behavior deviates from doing no harm, according to Cloudflare's blog post dated October 16, 2026.
Cloudflare says it already uses the system internally and plans to offer it to all customers, who can set the trust threshold for handling Verified bot traffic.
Written by AI from the articles below · updated Oct 16, 9:20 AM ET
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- Cloudflare Blog · AIOfficialCloudflare adds continuous trust scoring for Verified bots
AICloudflare says it is introducing a system to evaluate and report when Verified bot behavior deviates from doing no harm. The system scores how consistently a bot respects robots.txt and responds to HTTP 429 signals, producing an explainable trust band over time. Cloudflare says it already uses the system internally and plans to make it available to all customers, who can set the trust threshold for handling Verified bot traffic.
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