SECURITY

WP Engine bolts bot management onto Global Edge Security as AI crawlers surge

WordPress hosting company WP Engine Inc. today added bot management to its Global Edge Security service, giving site operators a way to filter the growing volume of automated and artificial intelligence traffic reaching their sites.

The Austin, Texas-based company runs more than 5 million WordPress sites and built Global Edge Security with Cloudflare Inc. The new controls sit on top of that service and let web teams write, test and change rules that block or allow bot traffic based on region, category or behavior.

AI agents, scrapers and other automated systems now account for a large share of requests hitting the open web. WP Engine says it mitigated more than 75 billion bot requests on its platform last year and a recent company traffic report found that 76% of visits to customer sites came from unverified sources. Distinguishing helpful crawlers from scrapers, credential-stuffing scripts and AI agents trained to extract content has become a daily operational problem for site owners.

Global Edge Security already bundles a managed web application firewall, advanced distributed denial-of-service protection, image optimization and a global content delivery network. The new bot controls plug into that stack and can be activated the same day they are configured, according to the company. An “Under Attack” mode lets administrators tighten defenses with a single toggle when traffic spikes turn hostile.

The product also includes customizable access rules that target unwanted automated activity by category or geography and edge-side caching designed to reduce the load that bot traffic places on origin servers. WP Engine is pitching the controls at digital agencies that manage multiple client sites and at e-commerce operators that need to block scrapers and inventory-hoarding bots without slowing down legitimate shoppers.

“Automated traffic is becoming more difficult to manage as AI systems, bots and human visitors increasingly blend together,” explains Ramadass Prabhakar, chief technology officer at WP Engine. “Web teams need clearer insight into traffic behavior and the flexibility to respond quickly without adding operational complexity.”

The Cloudflare partnership underpinning Global Edge Security is being positioned as the differentiator. Cloudflare operates one of the largest networks for filtering web traffic and last year began blocking AI scrapers by default for new customers, alongside a Pay Per Crawl marketplace that lets publishers charge AI companies for access to their content.

“AI-driven traffic introduces a new layer of complexity for websites because not all automated activity behaves the same way, and not all of it is necessarily malicious,” said Michael Tremonte, vice president of product at Cloudflare. “The challenge is helping web teams distinguish bot traffic and within that, good from bad, without slowing performance or increasing operational overhead.”

The bot management features are available now to Global Edge Security customers. WP Engine counts Pandora Media LLC, Experian plc, Equifax Inc., VMware LLC, HubSpot Inc. and Dell Technologies Inc. among its enterprise users.

Image: WP Engine