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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

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>

Testing and Refinement#

  • 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.