Testing Your Integration

After setting up any SeoRend integration, use these steps to verify everything works correctly.

Quick Test with curl

The fastest way to verify is to simulate a bot request using curl with a bot User-Agent:

curl -s -I -A "Googlebot/2.1 (+http://www.google.com/bot.html)" https://example.com/

A successful integration returns these headers:

HTTP/2 200
content-type: text/html; charset=utf-8
x-seorend-cache: MISS        ← first request (not yet cached)
x-seorend-render-time: 1823  ← render time in milliseconds

On subsequent requests to the same URL:

x-seorend-cache: HIT         ← served from cache
x-seorend-render-time: 0

Test That Regular Users Are NOT Prerendered

curl -s -I -A "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36" https://example.com/

The response should not contain any X-Seorend-* headers — regular users receive your app directly.

Test Multiple Bot Types

Verify that different bot types are all correctly detected:

# Google Search Bot
curl -s -I -A "Googlebot/2.1" https://example.com/

# Bing Bot
curl -s -I -A "Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; bingbot/2.0; +http://www.bing.com/bingbot.htm)" https://example.com/

# GPT/OpenAI Bot
curl -s -I -A "GPTBot/1.0 (+https://openai.com/gptbot)" https://example.com/

# Claude Bot
curl -s -I -A "ClaudeBot/1.0; +claudebot@anthropic.com" https://example.com/

# Social sharing (Facebook)
curl -s -I -A "facebookexternalhit/1.1" https://example.com/

# LinkedIn
curl -s -I -A "LinkedInBot/1.0 (compatible; Mozilla/5.0)" https://example.com/

All of these should return X-Seorend-Cache: MISS or HIT.

Test a Specific Page

# Test an inner page
curl -s -I -A "Googlebot/2.1" https://example.com/products/widget-pro

# Test with a query string
curl -s -I -A "Googlebot/2.1" "https://example.com/search?q=something"

View the Rendered HTML

To see the actual HTML returned to the bot:

curl -s -A "Googlebot/2.1" https://example.com/ | head -50

You should see a fully rendered HTML page — not just <div id="root"></div> — with all your content filled in.

Verify Static Files Are NOT Prerendered

Static assets should never go through SeoRend:

# These should return your file directly, no X-Seorend headers
curl -s -I -A "Googlebot/2.1" https://example.com/main.js
curl -s -I -A "Googlebot/2.1" https://example.com/styles.css
curl -s -I -A "Googlebot/2.1" https://example.com/logo.png

Browser DevTools Test

To verify regular users are not affected:

1. Open Chrome DevTools (F12)
2. Go to the Network tab
3. Reload your page
4. Click on the first request (your domain)
5. Check Response Headers — you should not see X-Seorend-Cache

Test Dashboard View

Log into app.seorend.com and check:

• Analytics → Bot requests should appear after your test
• Cache → Pages you tested should show as cached
• Usage → Render count should have increased

Common Issues

No X-Seorend-Cache header

The bot request isn’t reaching SeoRend. Check:

• Is your middleware installed correctly?
• Is SEOREND_API_KEY set in your environment?
• Is the User-Agent matching your bot detection list?

# Test with verbose output
curl -v -A "Googlebot/2.1" https://example.com/ 2>&1 | grep -i seorend

401 Unauthorized

Your API key is invalid or missing. Verify:

curl -s -X POST https://render.seorend.com/v1/render \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer sk_live_your_key" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"url":"https://example.com/","userAgent":"Googlebot"}'

429 Too Many Requests

You’ve exceeded the fair-use allowance for on-demand renders. Pages already cached keep being served normally — only new renders are throttled. Options:

• Wait for the billing period to reset
• Upgrade your plan in app.seorend.com — bigger plans cover more pages and include a larger fair-use allowance
• Make sure your sitemap is analyzed so your important pages are covered and refreshed proactively

Rendered HTML is incomplete

The page may be making async requests that complete after the render timeout. Check your SeoRend dashboard for render time — if it’s close to the limit, the page might not be fully loaded.

API Direct Test

You can call the SeoRend API directly to test:

curl -s -X POST https://render.seorend.com/v1/render \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer sk_live_your_key_here" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "url": "https://example.com/",
    "userAgent": "Googlebot/2.1 (+http://www.google.com/bot.html)"
  }' | jq '{status, cache, timings}'

Expected response:

{
  "status": 200,
  "cache": { "hit": false, "ttl_seconds": 86400 },
  "timings": { "render_ms": 1823, "total_ms": 1850 }
}