Cloudflare's CEO Says AI Agent Optimization Is a New Form of SEO
TLDR
Cloudflare's CEO says OpenAI pays for hints that tell its crawler when pages change, and that sites may charge AI agents less when they explain their visits.
Optimixed Overview
Optimixed's original report on this story.
Cloudflare's CEO says OpenAI pays for hints that signal to its crawler when pages change, and that sites may be able to charge agents less when they explain their visits. He framed this emerging work as a new version of SEO, as first reported by Search Engine Journal.
How we got here: earlier coverage
- Oct 30Shopify Adds Commission Option for Stores Paying AI Shopping Agent Developers
Shopify now lets merchants pay a commission on promoted products surfaced through AI shopping agents, with the agent developer deciding how to use that figure.
- Oct 22Google CEO Says AI Agents Will Access Websites Through Pages and APIs
Google's CEO indicated AI agents will access websites both through traditional page browsing and via APIs, with protocols offering better scalability but longer development cycles.
- Sep 23MIT and Stanford research shows AI agents can manipulate SEO metrics, highlighting need for unfakeable KPIs
MIT and Stanford research demonstrates that AI agents can exploit and manipulate SEO metrics, requiring teams to adopt metrics resistant to gaming.
- Sep 18Google, Cloudflare, and Microsoft pilot competing approaches to paying publishers for AI-generated content access
Google, Cloudflare, and Microsoft are each testing different models for compensating publishers when AI systems use their content.