Hi - My client has 4 web domains that have been on Cloudflare free plan with someone else for years. I set up a new Cloudflare account for him and transferred the domains to the new Cloudflare - everything worked the same.
I have then upgraded to Pro plan for his 2 bigger domains to use the Argo & Webp image optimisations.
Since then Google Console has been saying that there are 5XX errors and that the pages cannot be indexed. When I use the Test Live URL option in google console it says it can see the page. But when I request reindexing - After 5 days I get the notification that validation has failed.
The 2 domains that was upgraded to pro are: https://www.africaodyssey.com/ https://www.tanzaniaodyssey.com/
And the 2 domains that are still on Free plan (and has no issues): https://www.asiaodyssey.com/ https://www.southamericaodyssey.com/
Please help as this is affecting his google rankings!
Should I just downgrade to the Free version again?
You may skip items 1 and 2, and just focus on finding out which Cloudflare service is blocking Googlebot. In all likelihood, it is the WAF, a feature that is only available on the paid plans. If I’m right, you’d need to find which rules are resulting in false positives (blocking Googlebot) and create exemptions for them.
Hi @cbrandt
I have checked and do not have any rules set up. No custom rules, rate limiting Or any manage rules are set.
I have also disabled bot protections and asked google to slow down the rate at which they request indexing (https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/settings?sjid=4642132373935117717-EU).
I have since downgraded the https://www.africaodyssey.com/ domain to the free plan and turned off ARGO to see how this affects the recrawl. So that I can compare it to https://www.tanzaniaodyssey.com/ which is still on Pro and has Argo setup.
I just now realize I’ve misread your original post, as the error GSC is complaining about is in the 500 range, while I was thinking 403. So you can take WAF and other security measures out of the equation, as they would return 403 and GSC has a specific error warning for that error.
Instead, what you can do is investigate what requests are getting server error 5XX by using the Dashboard > Analytics & Logs tool, and applying the filter
Edge Status Code greater than or equals 500
You’d then know the exact error code GSC is receiving, and will be able to find the relevant Community Tip for that error here: 5XX.
So, it seems that Cloudflare is only passing along the 500 error it gets from the origin. Since your hosting provider claims there’s nothing there, I’d suggest you open a support ticket with Cloudflare to seek further assistance. You can open a ticket by visiting https://dash.cloudflare.com/?to=/:account/support and picking the Technical - Website option. Please share the ticket number here so that a Cloudflare Team member may have a look at it.
Thank you @cbrandt I will continue to chat with the hosting provider. You have been a great help. Let me see what they say before marking this issue as resolved.
So the ticket I created was closed and I had to recreate a new ticket 2880088
I am incredibly disappointed with Cloudflare’s support process - they are unwilling to help with this issue and say I need to chat with the hosting provider.
I have added 5 domains to the Pro package but need to cancel and move away from Cloudflare as it will kill the website SEO. And Cloudflare is not interested in helping resolve this issue.
I understand that status 500 is a server error but there are no errors logged on the server & pausing Cloudflare resolved the issue. I am not interested in blame-shaming but clearly, the account setup on Cloudflare has something to do with it.
As I said - extremely disappointed in the customer service and wondering if it is a platform I want to be even want to be locked into.
