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SERA integration on Akamai

Kindly follow the below steps to setup the routing of bot traffic to SERA.

Prerequisites#

  • All your page requests must get intercepted by below SERA routing rule
    • Please check your routing, caching and cache-variation policies for that
  • If caching is enabled, Users and Bots should have a separate cache-variations configured. This is to not serve the SERA’s bot-optimized-content to users.

Steps#

  1. Open Akamai Dashboard, and Create new Configuration Version
    Step

    From now onwards, while creating any condition, uncheck the Case-sensitive name checkbox from the Additional Options menu.
    Step

  2. Creating Property configuration rule#

    1. Create new rule in Property Configuration Settings
      Step

    2. Add following conditions :

      1. Request Method : Select is one of condition, and set value as GET

      2. Path : Select matches one of condition, and add respective page url pattern(s) that will be sent to SERA
        Step

      3. User-Agent : Select is one of condition for following user-agent values

        • During POC phase, add these agents :

          • *n7TestUserAgent*
          • *PTST*
          • *GTmetrix*
          • *google\ page\ speed*
          • *chrome-lighthouse*
          • *google-inspectiontool*
          • *n7ua*

        • For going live with SERA, add these agents :

          • *n7TestUserAgent*
          • *PTST*
          • *GTmetrix*
          • *google\ page\ speed*
          • *chrome-lighthouse*
          • *google-inspectiontool*
          • *n7ua*
          • *googlebot*
          • *facebookexternalhit*
          • *bingbot*

        • For going live with SERA on AI bots, add these agents :

          • *openai*
          • *gptbot*
          • *claudebot*
          • *claude-user*
          • *perplexity-user*
          • *perplexity-bot*
          • *google-extended*
          • *google-cloudvertexbot*
          • *google-notebooklm*
          • *amazonbot*
          • *duckassistbot*
          • *metaai*
          • *metabotic*
          • *meta-externalagent*
          • *copilot*
          • *baiduspider*
            Step

      4. File Extension :

        1. Select is one of condition for your page extension value like html, aspx, php
          If the pages do not have any extension, leave the list empty.

      5. Request Header : Select does not exists condition and set value as x-nv-app as header name

      6. Request Header : Select does not exists condition and set value as x-nv-sera-bypass as header name
        Step

        x-nv-app and x-nv-sera-bypass headers mentioned in logic are added on request when SERA connects to your server to fetch page content for optimizing and caching, and also when it bypasses the requests to origin on failover scenario.
        These requests are bypassed to your server.

      7. Add a rule to exclude any requests containing the nsbp query parameter in their url

        GMC requests should always be served with fresh content, else Google flags them with content-mismatch.
        So, make sure all the product URLs in your GMC feed file have nsbp query parameter.
        Above condition will bypass SERA for such requests, and route them to your origin.


  3. Adding Behavior to the rule#

    1. Scroll down to Behaviors section

    2. Click on + Behavior button
      Step

    3. IF YOUR SITEMAP PAGE URLS DO NOT HAVE QUERYSTRING - add Remove Outgoing Request Parameters Behavior, and keep the parameter list empty

    4. Scroll down to Origin Server section, and fill following details :

      1. Origin Type : Your origin
      2. Origin Server Hostname : SERA_ENDPOINT (Use the one shared by N7 team with you)
      3. Forward Host Header : Leave as it is
      4. Cache Key Hostname : Leave as it is
      5. IPV6 Origin Support : Leave as it is
      6. Supports Gzip Compression : Leave as it is
      7. Send True Client IP Header : Leave as it is
      8. True Client IP Header Name : Leave as it is
      9. Allow clients To Set True Client IP Header : Leave as it is
        Step

    5. Scroll down to Origin SSL Certificate Verification, Ports, Origin TLS Version sections, and fill following details :

      1. Origin SSL Certificate Verification :
        1. Verification Settings : Choose Your Own
        2. Use SNI TLS Extension : Yes
        3. Match CN/SAN To : Leave as it is
        4. Trust : Akamai-managed Certificate Authorities Sets
        5. Akamai-managed Certificate Authorities Sets : Switch on both Akamai Certificate Store and Third Party Certificate Store
      2. Ports :
        1. HTTP Port : 80
        2. HTTPS Port : 443
      3. Origin TLS Version :
        1. Minimum TLS Version : Akamai Supported
          Step

    6. Scroll down to Caching rule section, and Delete it : Step

  4. Setting up Outgoing request header#

    1. Scroll back up to Behaviors section top

    2. Click on Standrd property behavior
      Step

    3. Select Modify Outgoing request header from the list, and Click on Insert Behavior button
      Step

    4. Fill following details :

      1. Action : Add
      2. Select Header Name : Other
        1. Custom Header Name : X-NV-SERA-TOKEN
        2. Header Value : The value shared by N7 team with you
          Step

    5. Add another header

      1. Custom Header Name : X-NV-ACCESS-KEY
      2. Header Value : The value shared by N7 team with you

  5. Save and Activate#

    1. Scroll to bottom, click on and Save button
      Step

    2. Switch to Activate tab, and Activate it in the respective environments
      Step

    3. To verify, access any page matching configured pattern, and with one of the configured user-agents. It should show few response headers starting with X-SERA

  6. Testing and Refinement#

  • Keep refining the logic by adjusting user-agent list, and SERA exclusion-patterns as needed.

  • Test thoroughly:

    • WPT and GTMetrix will automatically receive the response from SERA due to the routing rule set above.

      • Steps to validate page using WPT

    • To check the SERA rendered page on browser, you can use DevTools > Network conditions facility , or some browser extension (like Simple modify headers ) to manipulate the browser user-agent.
      If in testing phase, use these user-agent values:
      For desktop:

      n7TestUserAgent

      For mobile:

      n7TestUserAgent; Android

      If SERA is live, you can use these actual bot user-agent values:
      For desktop:

      Mozilla/5.0 AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko; compatible; Googlebot/2.1; +<http://www.google.com/bot.html)> Chrome/W.X.Y.Z Safari/537.36

      For mobile:

      Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; Android 6.0.1; Nexus 5X Build/MMB29P) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/W.X.Y.Z Mobile Safari/537.36 (compatible; Googlebot/2.1; +<http://www.google.com/bot.html)>

  • Whitelist SERA requests at your origin to avoid any issues with indexing. Details are here

  • On go-live day, set the user-agent condition regex to actual bot user-agent values. Additionally, ensure that your condition is case-insensitive.

  • After go-live, in any dashboards created for monitoring the “actual user traffic” e.g. Google analytics, exclude the requests with user-agent string containing word “Nitrogen SERA” to get correct understanding about user-traffic.

Notes#

  • Go through the different scenarios mentioned here
  • Also Refer the Frequently Asked Questions about SERA here