"Site access blocked"
What this critical Monitoring recommendation means, why you're seeing it and how to resolve it
Last updated About 3 hours ago
Site access blocked is a critical recommendation in Consent Studio Monitoring. Active recommendations show on the Start page of your domain's dashboard and on the Recommendations page (Monitoring dropdown in the top bar). All collaborators on the domain also receive it by email.
What this recommendation means
Monitoring regularly opens your pages to detect tracking technologies and check your implementation. This recommendation means it could not load your website during its latest scan. It reads:
"Our scanner cannot access your website. If your site is password protected, add the username and password under Basic Authentication on your Domain settings page. Otherwise a firewall or bot protection is blocking us, and our IP addresses need to be allowed through."
Your website is not offline. Visitors can still use your site, and your consent banner keeps collecting and passing on consent as usual. Only Monitoring (detecting tracking technologies and checking your implementation) is on hold until the scanner can get in again.
Why you're seeing it
Something between our scanner and your website stops it. The causes we see most are below. Find yours and follow the steps.
Cloudflare, a firewall or bot protection
Cloudflare, a web application firewall (WAF), a security plugin or a bot protection service blocks our scanner. The fix is always to allow our Scanner IP addresses through. Step by step: Cloudflare and other firewalls.
Your site asks for a username and password
Add the credentials under Basic Authentication so the scanner can log in. Only the browser's username/password prompt works; login forms, such as a WordPress login page, are not supported. Step by step: Password-protected sites (Basic Authentication).
Shopify
Shopify blocks automated visitors and does not let you allowlist IP addresses, so you give Monitoring access with a crawler signature instead. A password-protected Shopify store can't be scanned until the store password is removed; Basic Authentication does not support it. See Shopify Monitoring access.
Webflow
Webflow sites can get this recommendation even without a firewall or Cloudflare of their own, and even when earlier scans worked fine. In those cases the block is most likely on Webflow's side.
Check that your domains are correctly connected in Webflow.
Get a new scan (see below). The block can be temporary: in a recent case, a new scan worked straight away.
If the recommendation comes back, contact Webflow support. Ask whether their platform blocks automated visitors from our scanner IP addresses, and whether they can let them through.
Using Cloudflare in front of your Webflow site? Then also follow the Cloudflare steps above.
How to resolve it
Fix access for your situation
Follow the section above that matches your website. For general checks that keep scans running, see How to make sure Monitoring can access your website.
Allow a new scan to run
Run an on-demand scan (Professional and up), ask us for one (Essential), or wait for the next weekly scan. On Shopify, saving your crawler signature starts a scan automatically. See the Monitoring scanning FAQ.
Check the result
Once a scan succeeds, the recommendation closes by itself. The Scan Context block on your dashboard shows when the last scan ran (see Finding your way around the dashboard homepage).
What happens to your detected tracking technologies?
Monitoring never reports "zero tracking technologies found" for a site it could not read. As soon as a scan succeeds again, your tracking technologies are detected again and your overview is up to date.
Don't need Monitoring right now?
You can dismiss the recommendation on the Recommendations page for a while. See About Web Recommendations & Troubleshooting.
More questions about scanning? See the Monitoring scanning FAQ. Still blocked? Contact us and include your domain, and we'll take a look.
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