Rate Limiting Bots Without Slowing Down Googlebot
To rate limit bots safely, verify Googlebot first and exempt it, then throttle everything else per IP with nginx limit_req and return…
Country-Level Targeting: ccTLD, Subfolder or Hosting Location
Deciding how to structure an international website is one of those SEO calls you don’t get to quietly walk back later. Country-level…
www vs non-www: Choosing One Host and Redirecting the Rest
www vs non-www: neither version ranks better. So pick one host per site and send the other to it with a 301.…
Server Downtime and SEO: What Your Proxy Should Return
For server downtime SEO, the rule is short. While your origin is down, your proxy should return a 5xx status code, ideally…
Shared vs Dedicated IP Hosting for SEO: What Really Changes
Few hosting decisions attract as much bad advice as the shared versus dedicated IP question. Sales pages sell the upgrade as a…
Reverse Proxy Caching and SEO: No Stale Pages for Crawlers
Crawlers see stale pages when your proxy keeps handing out stored copies and never checks them against the origin. Fixing reverse proxy…
How Many IP Addresses Does a 50-Site Network Actually Need?
Ask a network architect how many IP addresses a fifty-site estate needs and you’ll get a question back: fifty of what? A…
Reverse Proxy TTFB: Does a Proxy Slow Your Site?
Yes, a reverse proxy adds one more network hop, so it can push up your time to first byte. How much? With…
Reading Server Logs for Crawl Problems You Cannot See in Analytics
Every technical SEO investigation eventually hits a wall. Analytics just stops answering. You can see that organic sessions fell, that impressions flattened,…
How to Block AI Crawlers in robots.txt Without Hurting Search
Want to block AI crawlers without hurting search? Give each AI training token, like GPTBot and Google-Extended, its own robots.txt group with…
Real Client IPs Behind a Reverse Proxy: Getting Them Right
To get the real client IP behind a reverse proxy, you need two things. The proxy has to pass the visitor’s address…
Back Button Hijacking: Google’s New Spam Policy Is Now Enforced
Back button hijacking is now an explicit violation of Google’s spam policies. Enforcement started on June 15, 2026. So any script that…