SERA integration on Cloudflare

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

Prerequisites#

• This configuration will only work if site DNS is in Proxy mode
  
  Else, if your pages are not cached, you can set it at origin server (Nginx , Apache , custom etc.)
• All your page requests must get intercepted by Cloudflare origin-rule or Worker
  • Please check your routing, caching and cache-variation policies for that
• Users and Bots should have a separate cache-variations configured. This is to not serve the SERA’s bot-optimized-content to users.

Steps#

Select the steps according to your plan:

1. Steps for Enterprise plan customers

2. Steps for customers with other plans

Steps for Enterprise plan customers#

1. Create a DNS record for SERA#

   1. Select DNS > Record menu
      
      
      

   2. Click on Add record
      
      
      

      1. Select Type as CNAME
         
         
         

      2. Set the values as following :

         1. Name : Set as sera
            So that, the resultant domain would be sera.your.domainname.com e.g. sera.www.example.com. You will be referring it in next steps.
         2. Target : Set as the one shared by n7 team (e.g. yourdomain-sera.n7.io or sera.n7.io)
         3. Proxy status : Keep the switch set to Proxied
            
            
            

2. Create an Origin rule to route requests to SERA#

   1. Open Cloudflare Dashboard and Select the site on which SERA is to be configured
      
      
      

   2. Go to Rules then select Origin rules menu
      
      
      

   3. Click on Create Rule button
      
      
      

      1. Put Rule Name e.g.SERA routing
         
         
         

      2. Select Custom filter expression option

         1. Click on Edit Expression
            
            
            

         2. Put below expression in textarea :
            REPLACE FOLLOWING VALUES IN THE CONDITION :
            

            • host
              
            • Page extensions
              
            • Not-to-be-crawled pages
              
              

            Use this during testing phase :
            

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            (http.host == "your.domain.com" and http.request.method == "GET" and http.user_agent matches r"(?i)(n7TestUserAgent|google\ page\ speed|chrome-lighthouse|google-inspectiontool|PTST|GTmetrix|n7ua)" and http.request.uri.path.extension matches r"^(|html|aspx|php)$"  and not http.request.uri.path matches ".*/(api/|_next/|cdn-cgi/|account/|wishlist/|cart/|checkout/|page-not-found|undefined).*" and not any(http.request.uri.args.names[*] == "nsbp") and not any(http.request.headers["x-nv-app"][*] == "sera") and not any(http.request.headers["x-nv-sera-bypass"][*] == "true"))

            
            For actual bots, use this :
            
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            (http.host == "your.domain.com" and http.request.method == "GET" and http.user_agent matches r"(?i)(n7TestUserAgent|google\ page\ speed|chrome-lighthouse|google-inspectiontool|PTST|GTmetrix|n7ua|googlebot|facebookexternalhit|bingbot)" and http.request.uri.path.extension matches r"^(|html|aspx|php)$"  and not http.request.uri.path matches ".*/(api/|_next/|cdn-cgi/|account/|wishlist/|cart/|checkout/|page-not-found|undefined).*" and not any(http.request.uri.args.names[*] == "nsbp") and not any(http.request.headers["x-nv-app"][*] == "sera") and not any(http.request.headers["x-nv-sera-bypass"][*] == "true"))

            
            For AI bots, use this :
            
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            (http.host == "your.domain.com" and http.request.method == "GET" and http.user_agent matches r"(?i)(openai|gptbot|claudebot|claude-user|perplexity-user|perplexity-bot|google-extended|google-cloudvertexbot|google-notebooklm|amazonbot|duckassistbot|metaai|metabotic|meta-externalagent|copilot|baiduspider)" and http.request.uri.path.extension matches r"^(|html|aspx|php)$"  and not http.request.uri.path matches ".*/(api/|_next/|cdn-cgi/|account/|wishlist/|cart/|checkout/|page-not-found|undefined).*" and not any(http.request.uri.args.names[*] == "nsbp") and not any(http.request.headers["x-nv-app"][*] == "sera") and not any(http.request.headers["x-nv-sera-bypass"][*] == "true"))

            
            

            
            
            

            [ Maintain same expression at Origin rule as well as Transform rule ]
            
            

            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.

      3. In Then section

         1. Set Host header option to Rewrite to, and in textbox provide value as the one shared by n7 team (e.g. yourdomain-sera.n7.io or sera.n7.io)
            
            
            

         2. Set SNI option to Preserve
            
            
            

         3. Set DNS Record option to Override to, and in textbox provide value as sera.your.domainname.com e.g. sera.www.example.com
            (Here you are referring the DNS you had created in earlier step.)
            
            
            

         4. Set Destination Port option to Preserve
            
            
            

      4. Place the rule at First by selecting respective option and Save it
         
         
         

3. Create a Transform Rule#

   1. Select Rules > Transform Rules menu
      
      
      

   2. Select Modify Request Header tab
      Click on Create Rule button
      
      
      

      1. Put Rule Name e.g.SERA token setting rule
         
         
         

      2. Select Custom filter expression
         Put the same expression in textarea - that is set in Origin Rule
         
         
         [ Maintain same expression at Origin rule as well as Transform rule ]

      3. Select Set static
         
         
         

      4. Set Header name as x-nv-sera-token
         Set Value as the SERA token shared with you by N7 team
         
         
         

      5. Again, add another header
         Set Header name as x-nv-access-key
         Set Value as the domain specific secret access-key shared with you by N7 team
         

Steps for customers with other plans#

1. Create a worker with below steps#

   1. Open Cloudflare Dashboard and click on Workers & Pages on the left side
      
      
      

   2. Click on Create Worker
      
      
      

   3. Give your worker a name
      
      
      

   4. Click on the Deploy button at the bottom right
      
      
      

   5. Click on Edit code
      
      
      

   6. Replace the example code with this code

      1. Change YOUR_TOKEN with the SERA token shared with you
      2. Put the relevant bot user-agents in the BOTS array which should be routed to SERA.
         Check the Testing and Refinement section for some tips.
      3. Keep the file types which should not be sent to SERA in the SKIP_EXT array (only the pages be sent to the SERA)
         
         
         

   7. Click on Save and deploy
      
      
      

      1. If the pop-up modal shown, click on Save and deploy
         
         
         
         

2. Map the worker to your domain with below steps#

   1. Step back to the previous interface by clicking on the name of your worker on the top left
      
      
      

   2. Click on Settings
      
      
      

   3. Next to the Domains & Routes, click on +Add
      
      
      

   4. Select Route
      
      
      

   5. Type in your domain like this: example.com/ and Select the Zone where your site is
      
      
      

   6. Click on Add route
      
      
      

   7. Click on Deploy
      
      
      
      
      

Changes needed at GMC end#

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.

Testing and Refinement#

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

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

• 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:

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    n7TestUserAgent

    For mobile:

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    n7TestUserAgent; Android

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

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    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:

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    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