sternbergs.com — AI Site Grade

Analysis

The Akamai Wall That Only Lets Claude Through

Sternbergs.com is a multi-franchise automotive dealership group (Ford, Chrysler, Dodge, Jeep, Ram, Chevrolet) based in Jasper, Indiana, yet every major AI crawler and human browser receives a 403 Access Denied from Akamai — except anthropic-ai, which gets a full 200 with 378KB of content served from a separate nginx backend.

Crawler Access

The site's Akamai WAF configuration blocks every tested bot — GPTBot, Google-Extended, PerplexityBot, ClaudeBot, ChatGPT-User, OAI-SearchBot, Applebot-Extended, Bytespider — all return 403 with a 15-word "Access Denied" page. The robots.txt itself is also 403'd to all non-whitelisted user-agents. Only anthropic-ai passes through to a nginx origin that serves the full HTML, including a 153KB sitemap with 1,000+ URLs. The robots.txt (visible only to anthropic-ai) explicitly disallows GPTBot, OAI-SearchBot, ChatGPT-User, Claude-User, and Claude-SearchBot from JS/CSS/JSON/API paths — but does not block the homepage or inventory pages. The site has no llms.txt (connection refused on the bare domain, 403 on www).

Cold-Knowledge Gap

The LLM's prior knowledge about "Sternbergs" describes a UK-based luxury lighting manufacturer founded in 1923 — a complete hallucination. The actual site is Sternberg Automotive Group, a family-owned car dealership serving Indiana and Kentucky with Ford, Chrysler, Dodge, Jeep, Ram, and Chevrolet franchises. The about page describes "over 60 years" of operation, not 100. The gap is total: the brand identity, industry, geography, and founding era are all wrong in the model's cold knowledge.

Schema Posture

The homepage and inventory pages contain zero JSON-LD schema of any type. The HTML includes standard meta tags (description, author, robots, og:title) but no Organization, AutoDealer, Product, Vehicle, or LocalBusiness structured data. Given the site lists dozens of vehicle models with prices, trims, and images, the absence of Vehicle or Car schema is a significant omission for AI-driven search visibility.

External Signals

The site has zero indexed external mentions across web search results. No reviews, no Reddit threads, no press coverage, no dealer directory listings appear in search. The Wayback Machine shows 279 captures since August 2000, confirming the domain has been active for decades, but the current Akamai configuration has effectively erased the site from the open web. The only entities that can read the site's content are users who somehow bypass the WAF and the anthropic-ai crawler.

Findings

1. Akamai WAF blocks all AI crawlers except anthropic-ai High

   Every tested AI crawler (GPTBot, Google-Extended, PerplexityBot, ClaudeBot, ChatGPT-User, OAI-SearchBot, Applebot-Extended, Bytespider) receives a 403 Access Denied from Akamai. Only anthropic-ai gets a 200 response with full content.

   What to change: Reconfigure the Akamai WAF to allow common AI crawler user-agents (GPTBot, Google-Extended, ClaudeBot, etc.) to access the site, or serve a static HTML version to bots.

2. robots.txt is inaccessible to most crawlers High

   The robots.txt file returns 403 to all non-whitelisted user-agents, preventing crawlers from discovering allowed paths. Only anthropic-ai can read it.

   What to change: Ensure robots.txt is publicly accessible (200) to all user-agents, and include a sitemap directive.

3. No llms.txt file available Medium

   The site does not provide an llms.txt file; requests to both sternbergs.com/llms.txt and www.sternbergs.com/llms.txt fail (connection refused or 403).

   What to change: Create an llms.txt file at the root of the domain listing key pages and a brief site description for AI crawlers.

4. LLM cold knowledge hallucinates brand identity High

   The LLM's prior knowledge describes Sternbergs as a UK-based luxury lighting manufacturer founded in 1923, which is completely incorrect. The actual site is Sternberg Automotive Group, a car dealership in Indiana.

   What to change: Publish structured data (Organization, AutoDealer) and ensure the site is indexed by search engines to correct the knowledge gap.

5. No JSON-LD structured data on any page High

   The homepage and inventory pages contain zero JSON-LD schema. Missing Organization, AutoDealer, Vehicle, Product, and LocalBusiness markup.

   What to change: Add JSON-LD structured data for AutoDealer, Organization, and Vehicle (with price, trim, image) to all relevant pages.

6. Zero indexed external mentions or backlinks High

   Web searches for the dealership name, domain, and related terms return zero results. No reviews, directory listings, or press coverage are indexed.

   What to change: Claim and optimize Google Business Profile, submit to dealer directories, and build backlinks through local partnerships.

7. Sitemap only accessible to anthropic-ai Medium

   The sitemap.xml (153KB, 1000+ URLs) is served only to anthropic-ai; other crawlers cannot reach it due to the WAF.

   What to change: Make sitemap.xml publicly accessible and reference it in robots.txt.

8. Site not indexed by search engines High

   Web searches for the domain and brand return zero results, indicating the site is not indexed by Google or Bing.

   What to change: Submit the site to Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools, and ensure the WAF allows Googlebot.

What's working

• anthropic-ai crawler is whitelisted and served full content — The Akamai WAF allows anthropic-ai to access the site, returning a 200 response with 378KB of HTML including inventory pages and sitemap.
• Large sitemap with 1000+ URLs available to anthropic-ai — The sitemap.xml contains over 1000 URLs, providing comprehensive coverage of the site's pages to the whitelisted crawler.
• robots.txt allows homepage and inventory for anthropic-ai — The robots.txt visible to anthropic-ai does not block the homepage or inventory pages, only JS/CSS/JSON/API paths.
• Nginx origin serves full HTML content to anthropic-ai — The nginx backend returns complete HTML pages with vehicle listings, prices, and images, enabling rich content extraction.