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Cyprus Retail Sales Jump 9.8% In May As Consumer Spending Stays Strong

Cyprus’ retail sector continued to build momentum in May, with both sales values and volumes rising strongly, highlighting resilient consumer spending across a broad range of categories, according to data released by the Cyprus Statistical Service (Cystat).

Turnover Value And Volume Both Move Higher

The retail trade turnover value index increased 9.8% year on year in May, while the turnover volume index rose 7.5% compared with the same month in 2025. Together, the figures suggest that consumers not only spent more but also purchased greater volumes of goods across the retail sector.

Fuel And Household Goods Lead Value Growth

The strongest increase in turnover value came from automotive fuel, which climbed 20.9% compared with a year earlier.

Other household equipment, a category that includes building materials, carpets, furniture, electrical appliances and lighting, recorded the second-largest gain at 12%, reflecting continued demand for home-related purchases.

Educational and recreational goods, including books, stationery, sporting equipment and toys, also posted solid growth, with turnover value rising 10.1%.

Clothing, Technology And Household Equipment Drive Volume

Measured by sales volume, clothing and footwear delivered the strongest performance, advancing 19.4% year on year. Information and communication equipment followed with a 17.6% increase, while other household equipment recorded a 13.3% gain.

Not every segment shared in the broader upswing. Sales volumes of automotive fuel declined 3.8%, while flowers, plants, watches, jewellery, optical goods and second-hand items fell 2.1%.

Year-To-Date Growth Remains Positive

The positive trend extended across the first five months of the year. Between January and May, the retail turnover value index increased 7.1% compared with the same period of 2025, while the turnover volume index rose 5.9%.

Taken together, the latest figures indicate that Cyprus’ retail sector continues to benefit from resilient consumer demand. Although some categories remain under pressure, spending has remained broad-based across both essential goods and discretionary purchases, supporting steady growth in the market.

Cloudflare Sets New Default To Separate Search Crawlers From AI Bots

Cloudflare has drawn a sharper line between traditional search and artificial intelligence.

Beginning September 15, 2026, the company will change its default settings to block so-called mixed-use crawlers from pages that run ads, unless a site owner chooses otherwise. The policy applies to new Cloudflare customers, new sites created by existing customers, and all current free customers.

A Clearer Divide In Web Access

The shift could materially reshape how AI companies collect web data for model training and agentic products. Cloudflare’s central argument is straightforward: most publishers want their content to remain visible in search and accessible through certain AI services, but they do not want that same material repurposed without compensation.

In Cloudflare’s view, the problem is not crawling itself. It is the blending of three different functions: search, agentic use, and training into a single bot that makes it difficult for website owners to set meaningful boundaries.

The Google Question

Cloudflare pointedly referenced the “world’s largest search engine,” an unmistakable nod to Google, arguing that it has access to roughly twice as much information as rival AI companies because it makes it harder for customers to stay discoverable without also being used for AI.

Google has disputed that framing. The company offers Google Extended, a crawler setting that lets publishers opt out of having content used for training and AI products such as Gemini apps and Vertex AI, without affecting visibility in Google Search. At the same time, Googlebot still crawls for Search and for AI-powered features such as AI Overviews and AI Mode.

Publishers Want Reach, Not Exploitation

Matthew Prince, Cloudflare’s co-founder and chief executive, said the company is moving quickly because the internet is now dominated by machine traffic.

“Now that the majority of traffic on the Internet is non-human, we must go further and act faster so that a sustainable ecosystem can emerge,” Prince said, referring to the recent milestone in which bots surpassed human traffic online sooner than expected.

Prince added that Cloudflare’s tools and partnerships are designed to give publishers more visibility and commercial leverage, while also rewarding AI companies that are transparent about how they use content.

From Pay Per Crawl To Pay Per Use

Cloudflare has increasingly positioned itself as a gatekeeper for publishers looking to assert control in the AI era. The company already offers tools to block AI bots, along with a marketplace called Pay Per Crawl, which lets websites charge AI systems for scraping.

That framework is now expanding into Pay Per Use, which Cloudflare says will allow publishers to charge AI companies when content creates value, not merely when it is fetched. In practical terms, that shifts the economics from extraction to monetization.

Cloudflare says the move may also reduce waste. Its data suggests more than half of crawl traffic from AI bots is spent revisiting pages that have not changed, consuming bandwidth and compute without adding fresh value for either side.

Early Partners Signal The Commercial Model

To launch the new system, Cloudflare is working with Ceramic.ai and You.com. Under the opt-in model, publishers can be paid when their content appears in Ceramic’s AI search results or when You.com accesses premium material.

Cloudflare says other AI companies can adapt the model to fit their own products. The broader message is clear: the era of unrestricted crawling is giving way to one in which access, attribution, and compensation are increasingly negotiated rather than assumed.

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