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.
