Stop Bad Bots from Slowing Down Your Website

• CleanTalk Anti-Crawler(Bot Protection)
• CleanTalk Anti-Flood
• Try It

Bad bots can take up to 40% of all website traffic. They do not buy, they only overload servers, waste bandwidth, and make WordPress sites slow. CleanTalk protects against this with two features: Anti-Crawler (Bot Protection) and Anti-Flood. Together they stop fake traffic, reduce hosting costs, and improve real visitor experience.

CleanTalk SpamFireWall

SpamFireWall (SFW) is part of the CleanTalk Anti-Spam plugin. It blocks IPs with heavy spam activity by stopping GET requests before they reach your site. This saves server and database resources.

If your server uses Varnish, SFW may affect site loading speed. In that case, you can disable it in the plugin settings.

Anti-Flood and Anti-Crawler are additional features of SFW. They protect against bots that hack, scrape data, generate 404 errors, or overload the server with scans. These actions can slow down a website and hurt Google rankings.

Whitelist options are available:

• Whitelist by IP 
• Whitelist by User-Agent 

You can see more details about CleanTalk SpamFireWall here: https://cleantalk.org/help/cleantalk-spam-firewall.

CleanTalk Anti-Crawler

Anti-Crawler blocks bots that scrape content or scan for vulnerabilities. Search engines like Google, Bing, and Baidu are whitelisted by default, so your SEO is safe.

To enable: WordPress Dashboard → Settings → Antispam by Cleantalk → Advanced settings → Anti-Crawler (Bot Protection).

How it works: the first request from an IP is checked. If it fails, a blocking screen is shown for three seconds when the second request is made. Real visitors pass the check and continue browsing.

If there are false positives, try adjusting cookie settings (set to Use alternative mechanism or Off).
Note: when Bot Detector is enabled and the Pixel option is set to Auto, the Pixel is not loaded automatically, so you don’t need to change this setting. Support is available here.

CleanTalk Anti-Flood

Anti-Flood sets a limit on how many pages a visitor can open in one minute. By default, it is 20. If the limit is exceeded, the IP is blocked for 30 seconds. After the timer, the counter resets automatically.

To enable: WordPress Dashboard → Settings → Antispam by Cleantalk → Advanced settings → Anti-Flood. You can also set your own page view limit in Advanced Settings.

Why Enable These Options

• Improve WordPress speed by cutting fake traffic
• Reduce hosting and CDN costs
• Keep SEO crawl budget clean so Google focuses on real content.

Statistics 

Logs for Anti-Flood and Anti-Crawler are available in the SpamFireWall Log.

Try It in a Few Clicks

• Install the CleanTalk plugin from WordPress.org
• Activate your license and go to Settings → Advanced Settings
• Switch on Anti-Flood & Anti-Crawler.

<figure> <img src="screenshot-antiflood-settings.png" alt="CleanTalk plugin settings showing Anti-Flood and Anti-Crawler options in WordPress"> <figcaption>Anti-Flood & Anti-Crawler settings inside the CleanTalk plugin dashboard (WordPress → Settings → Advanced Settings).</figcaption> </figure>

Anti-Flood & Anti-Crawler setup in WordPress plugin settings.

Final Note

Visitors want fast websites, not inflated traffic numbers. By enabling Anti-Crawler and Anti-Flood, you stop bad bots, lower server load, and make WordPress faster for real users. These options work together with SpamFireWall and other CleanTalk plugins to provide multi-layered protection.

Stop bad bots today, improve WordPress speed, and keep your website secure for real visitors. Learn more here.