SERA integration on Apache Web Server

Kindly follow the below examples 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#

Change SERA_ENDPOINT to the SERA endpoint shared with you
Change YOUR_TOKEN to the SERA token shared with you
Change YOUR_DOMAINS_SECRET_TOKEN to the SERA token shared with you
Change example.com (server_name) to your actual domain
Change /path/to/your/root to the correct value
Keep the relevant bot user-agent regex condition mentioned below - to control the traffic being sent to SERA
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.
respective condition in below code will bypass SERA for such requests, and route them to your origin.


LoadModule dir_module modules/mod_dir.so
LoadModule authz_core_module modules/mod_authz_core.so
LoadModule proxy_module modules/mod_proxy.so
LoadModule proxy_http_module modules/mod_proxy_http.so
LoadModule rewrite_module modules/mod_rewrite.so
LoadModule headers_module modules/mod_headers.so
LoadModule ssl_module modules/mod_ssl.so

<VirtualHost *:8080>
	ServerName example.com
	DocumentRoot /path/to/your/root/

	<Directory "/path/to/your/root/">
		Options Indexes FollowSymLinks
		AllowOverride All
		Require all granted
	</Directory>

	#added for sera
	RewriteEngine On
	SSLProxyEngine On

	#added for sera
	<IfModule mod_headers.c>
		RequestHeader set x-nv-sera-token "YOUR_TOKEN"
		RequestHeader set x-nv-access-key "YOUR_DOMAINS_SECRET_TOKEN"
	</IfModule>

	#added for sera
	<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
		<IfModule mod_proxy_http.c>
			#USE THIS RewriteCond - DURING POC PHASE for bot User-Agent check :
			RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} (n7TestUserAgent|google\\ page\\ speed|chrome-lighthouse|google-inspectiontool|PTST|GTmetrix|n7ua) [NC,OR]
			#USE THIS RewriteCond - ON GOING LIVE ON SERA for bot User-Agent check :
			#RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} (n7TestUserAgent|google\\ page\\ speed|chrome-lighthouse|google-inspectiontool|PTST|GTmetrix|n7ua|googlebot|facebookexternalhit|bingbot) [NC,OR]
			#USE THIS RewriteCond - ON GOING LIVE ON SERA for AI bots for bot User-Agent check :
			#RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} (openai|gptbot|claudebot|claude-user|perplexity-user|perplexity-bot|google-extended|google-cloudvertexbot|google-notebooklm|amazonbot|duckassistbot|metaai|metabotic|meta-externalagent|copilot|baiduspider) [NC,OR]
			RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} _escaped_fragment_

			RewriteCond %{REQUEST_METHOD} ^GET$
			RewriteCond %{HTTP:X-NV-APP} ^$
			RewriteCond %{HTTP:X-NV-SERA-BYPASS} ^$
			RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^(|.+\.html|.+\.aspx|.+\.php)($|\?.*) [NC]
			RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !.*(/static/|/_next/|/api/|/login|/logout|/account/|/wishlist/|/cart/|/checkout/|/payment/).* [NC]
			RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING) !(^|&)nsbp=[^&]+ [NC]
			
			#USE THIS IF YOUR SITEMAP PAGE URLS DO NOT HAVE QUERYSTRING
			RewriteRule (.*) SERA_ENDPOINT? [P,END]
			#USE THIS IF YOUR SITEMAP PAGE URLS HAVE QUERYSTRING
			RewriteRule (.*) SERA_ENDPOINT [P,END]
		</IfModule>
	</IfModule>
</VirtualHost>

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.

You can test the Apache configuration on Fiddle
Whitelist SERA requests at your origin to avoid any issues with indexing. Details are here
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)>
```
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

SERA integration on Apache Web Server

Prerequisites#

Steps#

Testing and Refinement#

Notes#