Cloudflare wants Google to change its AI search crawling. Google likely won’t.

After Cloudflare started testing new features that would allow websites to block AI crawlers or require payment for scraping, the tech company immediately faced questions over the logistics of the plan.

In particular, website owners and SEO experts wanted to know how Cloudflare planned to block Google's bot from scraping sites to fuel AI overviews without risking blocking the same bot from crawling for valuable search engine placements.

Last week, a travel blogger raised questions about the blocking and so-called pay-per-crawl features and pushed Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince to respond on X (formerly Twitter):

"We will get Google to provide ways to block Answer Box and AI Overview, without blocking classic search indexing, as well," Prince said. Asked if that was even possible, Prince doubled down, responding, "it is. #staytuned"

In another post responding to a search engine optimization specialist, he claimed that Cloudflare was in "encouraging" talks with Google that he hopes will result in Google separating its crawlers to better work in Cloudflare's system. But if those talks go nowhere, he revealed Cloudflare is pushing for a law to be passed that's considered a "very viable option" in "many jurisdictions."

"Worst case we’ll pass a law somewhere that requires them to break out their crawlers and then announce all routes to their crawlers from there," Prince said. "And that wouldn’t be hard. But I’m hopeful it won’t need to come to that."