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ChatSEO can't read my site (403 error, Cloudflare): what to do?

How ChatSEO reads your pages, and how to unblock it if your site is behind Cloudflare

Does ChatSEO read my site?

Yes. When you ask for an analysis, ChatSEO fetches your site's pages directly to read their content. The bot it uses is documented here: https://chatseo.app/bot.

Don't confuse this with SEO figures (traffic, keywords, backlinks): those come from our data provider, not from this bot.

Can I get your IP ranges?

No, we don't publish IP ranges. To allow ChatSEO, use your site's protection settings, not an IP list.

My site returns a 403 error or a challenge

This is almost always an anti-bot protection, most often Cloudflare's. ChatSEO then gets a verification page instead of your content and can't analyze it.

To fix it:

  1. Open your Cloudflare dashboard and select your domain
  2. Go to Security, then Bots
  3. Turn off Bot Fight Mode
  4. Run your analysis again in ChatSEO

Whitelisting ChatSEO's user agent is not enough on Cloudflare's free plan: Bot Fight Mode still blocks it. You need to turn it off.

Bot Fight Mode is already off and it's still blocked

If your site still returns a challenge, even on robots.txt or in a normal browser, another Cloudflare rule is filtering every visitor. Check:

  • Security Level: it must not be set to I'm Under Attack
  • WAF custom rules: a rule may challenge every visitor. In Security, then Events, you can see which rule is triggering
  • Paid Cloudflare plans: the setting is called Super Bot Fight Mode. Set Definitely automated to Allow

If it's still blocked after these checks, contact support.