WAF
A web application firewall that evaluates HTTP requests against security rules.
What WAF means
It can stop attacks and legitimate crawlers, and a block page may still carry HTTP 200.
Where WAF comes up on this site
- How to verify Googlebot, GPTBot and other crawlers by IPIf verified lines are being refused, that is a real block on a real crawler: check bot-management rules, WAF rules and rate limits for the ranges involved, then re-test by scanning the site .
- Cloudflare AI Crawl Control vs CrawlCheck: block vs measureOn a Cloudflare site, bot management and WAF rules can still refuse a crawler that AI Crawl Control allows.
Related terms in HTTP, edge and rendering
The delivery layer between an origin and a client: proxies, caches, redirects, status codes and the headers that decide what a crawler actually received.
Content-Language header · HTTP/3 · Alt-Svc · HTTPS DNS record · Link header · content negotiation · Markdown negotiation · Retry-After · Server-Timing · WWW-Authenticate · Allow header · Content-Digest · Origin server · Reverse proxy · CDN · Edge node · Bot score · TLS handshake · DNS resolution · DNS timeout · Connection timeout · Read timeout · Redirect chain · Redirect loop · 301 redirect · 302 redirect · 307 redirect · 308 redirect · 304 response · 404 response · 410 response · 429 response · 500 response · 502 response · 503 response · 504 response · HEAD request · GET request · Content type · MIME sniffing · Content encoding · Compression · Brotli · ETag · Last-Modified · If-None-Match · Cache hit · Cache miss · Cache key · Vary header · Stale response · Stale-while-revalidate · Edge redirect · Origin bypass · Response parity · Header parity · hreflang · canonical URL · HSTS · HSTS preload list · Content-Security-Policy · CSP nonce · edge cache · cache split · cache-buster · Cache-Control · Age header · render-blocking resource · payload text share · lazy loading · 404 and 410 status codes
Questions about WAF
What is WAF?
A web application firewall that evaluates HTTP requests against security rules.
Which area of the glossary does WAF belong to?
HTTP, edge and rendering: The delivery layer between an origin and a client: proxies, caches, redirects, status codes and the headers that decide what a crawler actually received.
See it in the full glossary · 772 terms across 19 areas.
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