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its going to get worse though as cloudflare keeps blocking more and more

by pvab3 1mo ago

ericd 1mo ago
The sites that do that won't be getting money from my and others' agents. Guessing that's going to become more and more of a problem for those sites.
- ezst 1mo ago
  And yours and other's agents will probably remain an insignificant and invisible customer base anyway. My crystal ball is as good as anyone's, but if "agentic shopping" ever becomes mainstream, you can be sure that the vast majority will ask their phone (i.e. Google, i.e. Google Shopping) what the best price is anyways.
  - ericd 1mo ago
    Sure, Google could be their agent, or ChatGPT, or Claude, or whatever local model the person is running. The big guys might all have the results cached so they don't have to rerun the crawl. Whatever their choice of agent, it seems pretty clear that almost everyone's going to use them, they're way too useful not to.
- Marsymars 1mo ago
  I expect a small site that undercuts the top Google results by 18% with a sign-up discount probably isn't profitable on those orders, so blocking agents would save them money - it's not like someone using agents in that way is going to have any loyalty to shopping from that site in the future.
  - tmp10423288442 1mo ago
    If no one can find your site because you block agents, that won’t do much good either.
    - Marsymars 1mo ago
      Yeah, I mean if that's the case, then said small sites are probably headed for extinction, and agents won't have anything to work with other than whatever the top Google result is anyway.
manmal 1mo ago
I‘m using mostly the browser automations for things like that now. Same for research - ChatGPT is banned from reading many pages, but Codex can read anything I can. But isn’t it funny that Cloudflare is blocking AI on their pages, but on the other hand is researching and marketing things like „you can put a browser in a CF worker“
- throwaway63467 1mo ago
  Their browser workers won’t get blocked. Same with all big vendors, keep out small competitors enjoy access yourself and sell it to a select few partners.

its going to get worse though as cloudflare keeps blocking more and more

by pvab3 1mo ago

its going to get worse though as cloudflare keeps blocking more and more

ericd 1mo ago

The sites that do that won't be getting money from my and others' agents. Guessing that's going to become more and more of a problem for those sites.

ezst 1mo ago
And yours and other's agents will probably remain an insignificant and invisible customer base anyway. My crystal ball is as good as anyone's, but if "agentic shopping" ever becomes mainstream, you can be sure that the vast majority will ask their phone (i.e. Google, i.e. Google Shopping) what the best price is anyways.
- ericd 1mo ago
  Sure, Google could be their agent, or ChatGPT, or Claude, or whatever local model the person is running. The big guys might all have the results cached so they don't have to rerun the crawl. Whatever their choice of agent, it seems pretty clear that almost everyone's going to use them, they're way too useful not to.
Marsymars 1mo ago
I expect a small site that undercuts the top Google results by 18% with a sign-up discount probably isn't profitable on those orders, so blocking agents would save them money - it's not like someone using agents in that way is going to have any loyalty to shopping from that site in the future.
- tmp10423288442 1mo ago
  If no one can find your site because you block agents, that won’t do much good either.
  - Marsymars 1mo ago
    Yeah, I mean if that's the case, then said small sites are probably headed for extinction, and agents won't have anything to work with other than whatever the top Google result is anyway.

manmal 1mo ago

I‘m using mostly the browser automations for things like that now. Same for research - ChatGPT is banned from reading many pages, but Codex can read anything I can. But isn’t it funny that Cloudflare is blocking AI on their pages, but on the other hand is researching and marketing things like „you can put a browser in a CF worker“

throwaway63467 1mo ago
Their browser workers won’t get blocked. Same with all big vendors, keep out small competitors enjoy access yourself and sell it to a select few partners.