Article
Does Cloudflare's Disallow AI Training hurt Google Search?
By Brightiny9Published
No. Disallow AI Training keeps Google's search crawler allowed, and Google says Google-Extended does not affect Search (checked 2026-10-30).
No. Cloudflare's "Disallow AI Training" keeps Google's search crawler allowed, and Google says its training opt-out token, Google-Extended, does not affect Search inclusion or ranking. Older "Block" choices were due to move to this setting. One gap remains: Google's entry does not say whether Google-Extended covers AI Overviews. Checked 2026-10-30.
| Question | Short answer | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Does Disallow AI Training block Googlebot? | No. Mixed-use crawlers that Cloudflare calls Accountable stay allowed for search | Cloudflare blog, 2026-09-15 |
| What happens to an old "Block" choice for Training? | It is due to migrate to Disallow AI Training | Cloudflare blog, 2026-09-15 |
| Does Google-Extended affect Google Search? | No, according to Google | Google crawler docs, updated 2026-10-15 |
| Does Google-Extended cover AI Overviews and AI Mode? | Google's entry does not mention them. One news site says it does not cover them | PPC Land, 2026-09-27 |
What does Disallow AI Training do?
It writes a no-training preference into your robots.txt. Cloudflare says:
"Bot Preference Sync publishes the applicable no-training preference in robots.txt." (Cloudflare blog, 2026-09-15)
The post also says that Accountable mixed-use crawlers, which serve both search and AI, remain allowed for search. So Googlebot is still let in. Crawlers that only train are blocked.
What happened to the old Block choices?
The same Cloudflare post lists its changes under "What changes on September 15?" and says:
"Previous Training selections of Block or Block on pages with ads will migrate to Disallow AI Training." (Cloudflare blog, 2026-09-15)
The post gives no end date for the move. PPC Land reports a customer email dated 2026-09-16 saying settings would migrate over the following week, and notes that this is one day after the post (PPC Land, 2026-09-27). That is one news site, so treat the timing as reported, not confirmed. We could not see whether any given account has moved. Your dashboard is the only proof.
Why it matters: Cloudflare's own 2026-07-01 changelog said multi-purpose crawlers that combine Search and Training would be affected by new defaults to block Training (Cloudflare changelog, 2026-07-01). PPC Land's headline says Cloudflare later dropped the planned Googlebot block. Posts written between those two dates may still carry the old warning.
What does Google-Extended control?
Google-Extended is a token you disallow in robots.txt. Google's entry says it manages use of your content for training Gemini models and for grounding in Gemini Apps and the Vertex AI API. On Search, Google says it:
"does not impact a site's inclusion in Google Search nor is it used as a ranking signal in Google Search." (Google crawler docs, 2026-10-15)
What is still not confirmed?
| Claim | Source | Date | What the primary page says | Checked |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Google-Extended does not cover AI Overviews or AI Mode | PPC Land | 2026-09-27 | Google's entry does not mention either feature. Not confirmed by Google | 2026-10-30 |
| Every old Block setting has already migrated | PPC Land | 2026-09-27 | The Cloudflare post gives no end date. Not confirmed | 2026-10-30 |
Our read: if you only want to opt out of Gemini training, this setting does the job without risking your Search visibility. If you also want to keep pages out of AI answers in Google Search, these sources do not show that it does.
How can you check your own site?
- In Cloudflare, open the AI traffic options for your domain and read what is set for Training.
- Open
/robots.txton your site and look for aGoogle-Extendedline. - In Google Search Console, run URL Inspection on one page to see whether Google can fetch it. We did not find an official page that calls a fetch error a warning sign for this setting, so treat it only as a spot check.
- If an older guide tells you to turn on "Block AI bots", check its date. Our earlier article on Block AI bots versus managed robots.txt describes those settings as they stood on 2026-10-25, before we confirmed the migration above.
How we researched this
Researched from public sources on 2026-10-30: Cloudflare's blog post and changelog, Google's crawler documentation and PPC Land. We did not test this on a live site or inspect any Cloudflare account. Quotes were checked against the pages through a page-reading tool, which can shorten text, so we kept quotes short.
Changelog
- 2026-10-30: First published.