Pay per crawl is a new feature to allow content creators to charge AI crawlers for access to their content.
Pay per crawl grants domain owners full control over their monetization strategy. They can define a flat, per-request price across their entire site. Publishers will then have three distinct options for a crawler:
- Allow: Grant the crawler free access to content.
- Charge: Require payment at the configured, domain-wide price.
- Block: Deny access entirely, with no option to pay.
Although this is old news, I still found it interesting. Also, I like the “AI Labyrinth” feature of Cloudflare to block AI bots.
Cloudflare seems to live in a world where AI scrapers are ethical and lawful.
And apparently profitable. These companies are essentially buying their shit based on clout, not actual possessed monetary value. I’m struggling to see how that could translate into whatever system Cloudflare thinks they will engage with.
Cloudflare’s business model is dealing with unethical and unlawful bots. They can pour money into the arms race with “AI” companies and win. If they can’t their service isn’t valuable.