Serpwise AI

Rules are the core of SerpWise — they define what SEO modifications the gateway applies to each request.

The rules engine is the heart of SerpWise. Rules tell the gateway what to look for in a request (conditions) and what to do when it finds a match (actions). Every SEO modification you make — setting meta tags, injecting structured data, modifying headers — is defined as a rule.

What Is a Rule?

A rule has three parts:

Name — a label for your own reference
Conditions — criteria that must be true for the rule to fire (e.g. "URL path starts with /blog/")
Actions — modifications to apply when conditions match (e.g. "set meta robots to noindex")

When a request comes in, the gateway evaluates every enabled rule. For each rule where the conditions match, the actions are applied to the HTML response.

Rule Priority

Rules are evaluated in priority order — lower numbers run first. When multiple rules match the same request, all of them are applied, but in priority order.

This matters when rules affect the same element. For example, if rule #1 sets the canonical to /page-a/ and rule #2 sets it to /page-b/, the last one applied (rule #2) wins.

Use priority to control the order of operations deliberately. You can reorder rules by dragging them in the Rules tab.

Enabling and Disabling Rules

Each rule has an enable/disable toggle. Disabled rules are skipped entirely during evaluation — they don't count against performance and don't affect responses.

Use this to:

Temporarily disable a rule without deleting it
Keep experimental rules off until you're ready to activate them
Quickly roll back a change by disabling the rule

Rule Statistics

Each rule tracks:

Triggered count — how many requests have matched this rule since it was created
Last triggered — timestamp of the most recent match

Use this to identify rules that are never firing (possible condition misconfiguration) or rules that are firing unexpectedly often.

URL Simulator

The URL Simulator in the Rules tab lets you test your rules without sending real traffic. Enter a URL and optionally specify:

Request method
Custom request headers
User agent string

The simulator evaluates all your enabled rules against the simulated request and shows:

Which rules match
What actions would be applied
The expected output HTML (where applicable)

Test before going live

Always use the URL simulator to verify new rules behave as expected before enabling them on live traffic.

Common Use Cases

Add `noindex` to staging or parameter pages

Apply set_meta_robots with a noindex, nofollow value to any URL matching a pattern:

Condition: url.path starts_with /staging/
Action:    set_meta_robots → "noindex, nofollow"

Set canonical tags site-wide

Apply a canonical based on the current URL to prevent duplicate content issues:

Condition: response.status_code equals 200
Action:    set_canonical → https://www.example.com{url.path}

Inject JSON-LD structured data on product pages

Target a specific URL pattern and inject schema markup:

Condition: url.path starts_with /products/
Action:    inject_json_ld → { "@type": "Product", ... }

Block AI crawlers from specific content

Use bot detection conditions to target specific crawlers:

Condition: request.bot_name equals "GPTBot"
Action:    set_response_header → X-Robots-Tag: noindex

Fix broken hreflang across localized pages

Add hreflang link elements without touching your CMS:

Condition: url.path starts_with /en/
Action:    add_hreflang → lang=en, href=https://www.example.com/en{url.path}

Rules Engine