AI search fix
Nginx: allow AI bots safely
To allow AI bots safely in Nginx, define explicit conditions for trusted crawler user-agents and keep default protections for unknown automation. Nginx should return normal 200 responses to allowed bots on public pages and avoid accidental blocks from generic anti-bot snippets. Server policy must match your robots.txt intent: if one layer allows and another denies, crawl behavior becomes inconsistent. After changes, test with logs and sample user-agent requests. Allowing AI bots improves crawl access, but it does not guarantee citations.
Many Nginx setups inherit copy-pasted deny rules that catch trusted bots. Review includes and inherited server blocks before changing only one location directive.
Nginx rollout checklist for AI bots
- List trusted AI user-agents and document desired policy per bot.
- Audit existing deny/challenge directives in all included config files.
- Add narrow allow logic for trusted bots on public HTML routes.
- Keep rate-limits and abuse controls for unknown bot traffic.
- Reload config safely and verify with logs plus test requests.
You'll get an HTML report highlighting crawler access issues before and after server rule changes.
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