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Integration guide

Prerendering on Akamai EdgeWorkers

Akamai EdgeWorkers run JavaScript at the Akamai edge, integrated with Property Manager rules and Bot Manager. For enterprise sites already on Akamai, this is the natural place to add prerendering — no new vendor, no new operational surface.

Setup overview

Deploy an EdgeWorker on the request event. Classify the user-agent (using Bot Manager scores if available), rewrite bot requests to a prerender source via Property Manager origin selection or direct sub-request.

Working snippet

// EdgeWorker main.js
import { logger } from 'log'

const BOT_UA = /Googlebot|OAI-SearchBot|PerplexityBot|ClaudeBot|GPTBot|Bingbot/i

export function onClientRequest(request) {
  const ua = request.getHeader('User-Agent')?.[0] ?? ''
  if (!BOT_UA.test(ua)) return

  // Akamai Bot Manager classification (if available)
  const botScore = request.getVariable('AKAMAI_BOT_SCORE')

  // Route bot requests to the prerender origin defined in Property Manager
  request.route({
    origin: 'prerender-origin',
    path: `/snapshots${request.path}`,
    headers: { 'X-Original-UA': ua },
  })

  logger.log(`Routed bot ${ua.slice(0, 30)} score=${botScore}`)
}

Decision criteria

Fits when

  • Site is already on Akamai with EdgeWorkers enabled.
  • You have Bot Manager for sophisticated classification beyond user-agent.
  • Compliance requires keeping all edge logic on Akamai.

Decision criteria

Avoid when

  • EdgeWorkers add cost without offsetting indexation gain at your traffic volume.
  • You can run the same logic on Cloudflare or Vercel for less.

Common pitfalls

Watch for these on first rollout

EdgeWorker quota and resource tier

EdgeWorkers have CPU and memory quotas per tier. The bot-routing logic is light, but combining it with other workers can exhaust the budget. Monitor execution metrics in Akamai Control Center.

Property Manager rules conflicting with worker routing

EdgeWorker route() decisions can be overridden by upstream Property Manager rules. Verify that origin selection happens at the EdgeWorker level, not earlier in the rule pipeline.

Bot Manager false positives blocking real crawlers

Aggressive Bot Manager scores can flag Googlebot or Bingbot as suspicious. Combine Bot Score with verified-bot allowlists for major crawlers to avoid accidentally blocking legitimate fetches.

FAQ

Platform-specific questions

What is the EdgeWorker resource tier I should target?

Dynamic Compute tier supports the bot-routing pattern with comfortable margin (128 KB code, 5 ms CPU, 30 MB memory). Free tier is too constrained for production prerender routing — limits will be hit under crawl traffic spikes.

Does Bot Manager replace or complement EdgeWorker logic?

Complements. Bot Manager classifies traffic and exposes a score via `pmuser_*` headers. The EdgeWorker reads that score plus its own user-agent + IP verification to make the final route decision. Both signals together are more reliable than either alone.

How do I roll out incrementally without breaking existing properties?

EdgeWorkers attach to Property Manager rules with a percentage-based traffic match. Start at 1% of bot traffic, monitor `pmuser_x_prerender_decision` log fields for 48 hours, then ramp to 10% → 50% → 100% with rollback on error-rate alerts.

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Platform documentation

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