Akamai (BYOCDN)

This configuration routes agentic traffic (requests from AI bots and LLM user agents) to the Edge Optimize backend service (live.edgeoptimize.net). Human visitors and SEO bots continue to be served from your origin as usual. To test the configuration, after the setup is complete, look for the header x-edgeoptimize-request-id in the response.

Prerequisites

Before you set up the Akamai Property Manager rules, ensure you have:

Configuration

The following Akamai Property Manager rule routes agentic HTML page traffic to Edge Optimize. The configuration includes the following steps:

1. Set routing criteria (User-Agent and HTML traffic matching)

Set routing for the following user agents:

 *AdobeEdgeOptimize-AI*
 *ChatGPT-User*
 *GPTBot*
 *OAI-SearchBot*
 *PerplexityBot*
 *Perplexity-User*
 *ClaudeBot*
 *Claude-User*
 *Claude-SearchBot*

2. Set Origin and SSL behavior

Set origin as live.edgeoptimize.net and Match SAN to *.edgeoptimize.net

3. Set Cache Key Variable

Set the cache key variable PMUSER_EDGE_OPTIMIZE_CACHE_KEY to LLMCLIENT=TRUE;X_FORWARDED_HOST={{builtin.AK_HOST}}

4. Caching Rules

5. Modify Incoming Request Headers

Set the following incoming request headers:
x-edgeoptimize-api-key to the API Key retrieved from LLMO
x-edgeoptimize-config to LLMCLIENT=TRUE;
x-edgeoptimize-url to {{builtin.AK_URL}}

Allow Optimize at Edge through firewall rules (optional)

If your CDN uses a WAF or Bot Manager:

6. Modify Incoming Response Headers

7. Cache ID Modification

8. Modify Outgoing Request Headers

Set x-forwarded-host header to {{builtin.AK_HOST}}

9. Site Failover

The Site Failover configuration has two parts: a failover behavior inside the main Optimize at Edge routing rule and a sibling rule that adds a response header when fallback occurs.

9a. Configure the Site Failover behavior

Inside the main Optimize at Edge routing rule, create a child rule named Site Failover Behavior. Set it to Match Any and add these criteria:

9b. Configure the failover response header rule

▼ Optimize at Edge                         ← parent rule group
     ▼ Optimize at Edge Routing               ← routing child
       Site Failover Behavior                 ← nested child
     EdgeOptimize Failover - Test Header      ← sibling of routing child

Site Failover ensures that if Edge Optimize returns an error or times out, Akamai recreates the request for your original hostname so the visitor still receives the site’s normal response.

Verify the setup

After completing the setup, verify that bot traffic is being routed to Edge Optimize and that human traffic remains unaffected.

1. Test bot traffic (should be optimized)

Simulate an AI bot request using an agentic user-agent:

curl -svo /dev/null https://www.example.com/page.html \
  --header "user-agent: chatgpt-user"

A successful response includes the x-edgeoptimize-request-id header, confirming that the request was routed through Edge Optimize:

< HTTP/2 200
< x-edgeoptimize-request-id: 50fce12d-0519-4fc6-af78-d928785c1b85

2. Test human traffic (should NOT be affected)

Simulate a regular human browser request:

curl -svo /dev/null https://www.example.com/page.html \
  --header "user-agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7) AppleWebKit/537.36"

The response should not contain the x-edgeoptimize-request-id header. The page content and response time should remain identical to before enabling Optimize at Edge.

3. How to differentiate between the two scenarios

The status of the traffic routing can also be checked in the LLM Optimizer UI. Navigate to Customer configuration and select the CDN configuration tab.

To learn more about Optimize at Edge, including available opportunities, auto-optimization workflows, and FAQs, return to the Optimize at Edge overview.