--- title: "Telling verified agents from bots | Am I Ready for Agents?" description: "How to tell verified agents from unknown bots: the decision, three options with what each one costs, dated facts and the sentence to send your web team." canonical: https://amireadyforagents.com/decisions/verifying-agents site: "Am I Ready for Agents?" last_updated: 2026-11-04 section: "Decisions" --- # Telling verified agents from bots | Am I Ready for Agents? > How to tell verified agents from unknown bots: the decision, three options with what each one costs, dated facts and the sentence to send your web team. Source: https://amireadyforagents.com/decisions/verifying-agents Site: Am I Ready for Agents? Last reviewed: 2026-11-04 # How to tell verified agents from unknown bots ## In short Decide whether agents that prove who operates them are treated differently from automation that only claims a name, and ask your CDN or bot vendor to do it. A name in a request can be copied by anyone. Signatures and registration let you welcome a customer's agent without opening the door to every script. ## The decision Decide whether you will treat agents that prove who operates them differently from automation that only claims a name, and ask your CDN or bot vendor to do it. Who decides: Security, with the head of ecommerce or digital. ## The options 1. **Verify by signature and treat verified agents as customers**Operators including OpenAI, Google and AWS sign their agents' requests; your CDN can check the signature. [Cloudflare: The Internet has a second audience (30 Sep 2026)](https://blog.cloudflare.com/agentic-web/), read 4 Nov 2026. 2. **Require registration, as Zocdoc does**You know who each agent is and can set rules per agent; fewer agents will bother. [Zocdoc for Agents (markdown)](https://www.zocdoc.com/business/welcome-agents.md), read 4 Nov 2026. 3. **Treat all automation the same**Simple, but a real customer's agent is blocked along with scrapers. [Cloudflare: the agentic internet, WebMCP example (6 Aug 2026)](https://blog.cloudflare.com/the-agentic-internet/), read 4 Nov 2026. ## What we found - 30 Sep 2026 Cloudflare reported on 30 September 2026 that it sees more than 500 billion verified bot requests each week. [Cloudflare: The Internet has a second audience (30 Sep 2026)](https://blog.cloudflare.com/agentic-web/), read 4 Nov 2026 - 20 Sep 2026 Amazon said Muse did not identify itself while browsing its store, one of its reasons for blocking it in September 2026. Trade press report. [Retail Gazette: Amazon blocks Meta's Muse (22 Sep 2026)](https://www.retailgazette.co.uk/blog/2026/09/amazon-blocks-metas-new-ai-shopping-agent-from-its-website/), read 4 Nov 2026 - Read 4 Nov 2026 Web Bot Auth is an IETF draft in which an agent signs its requests with HTTP Message Signatures so a site can check who operates it. [IETF draft: Web Bot Auth architecture](https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-meunier-web-bot-auth-architecture/), read 4 Nov 2026 ## How to decide - Ask your bot vendor whether it checks signed requests and a verified-bot list today. - Decide what a verified agent may do: read, add to basket, check out. Treat each as its own permission. - If you run a network or a marketplace, consider registration, which gives you a named human contact for each agent. ## Where this shows up - [Self-check question 16](https://amireadyforagents.com/self-check#q16)Can your team tell verified bots and agents (for example through Web Bot Auth signatures or a verified bot directory) apart from unknown automation? - [The healthcare guide](https://amireadyforagents.com/for/healthcare)Appointment booking through Zocdoc, Gemini and Amazon Health AI, with patient consent rules. - [The financial services guide](https://amireadyforagents.com/for/finance)Comparison and quote apps inside ChatGPT that hand off to the firm's own site. - [The publishing guide](https://amireadyforagents.com/for/publishers)Separate controls for training, search and live fetches, and what Cloudflare changed in 2026. ## Sources 1. [Cloudflare: The Internet has a second audience (30 Sep 2026)](https://blog.cloudflare.com/agentic-web/) (blog.cloudflare.com/agentic-web), read 4 Nov 2026. 2. [Zocdoc for Agents (markdown)](https://www.zocdoc.com/business/welcome-agents.md) (zocdoc.com/business/welcome-agents.md), read 4 Nov 2026. 3. [Cloudflare: the agentic internet, WebMCP example (6 Aug 2026)](https://blog.cloudflare.com/the-agentic-internet/) (blog.cloudflare.com/the-agentic-internet), read 4 Nov 2026. 4. [Retail Gazette: Amazon blocks Meta's Muse (22 Sep 2026)](https://www.retailgazette.co.uk/blog/2026/09/amazon-blocks-metas-new-ai-shopping-agent-from-its-website/) (retailgazette.co.uk/blog/2026/09/amazon-blocks-metas-new-ai-shopping-agent-from-its-website), read 4 Nov 2026. Reported by trade press. 5. [IETF draft: Web Bot Auth architecture](https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-meunier-web-bot-auth-architecture/) (datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-meunier-web-bot-auth-architecture), read 4 Nov 2026. Last reviewed 4 November 2026 Reviewed 4 November 2026. [5 sources](#sources), each with the day it was read. ## Send this to your web team **Take this to your web team**Please tell us whether our CDN or bot protection checks verified bot signatures (Web Bot Auth) or a verified bot list, and whether we treat verified agents differently from unknown automation. The full list of sentences is on [ask your web team](https://amireadyforagents.com/ask-your-web-team).