westhillsautoplex.com — AI Site Grade

Analysis

Akamai Blocks Every AI Crawler Except Anthropic

The site operates a selective AI-access gate: every major AI crawler (GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot, Google-Extended, OAI-SearchBot, Applebot-Extended, Bytespider) receives a 403 from Akamai on the homepage, while anthropic-ai alone gets a 200 with 321KB of rendered HTML served from an nginx origin. This is not a standard robots.txt block — it is a WAF-level rule that explicitly whitelists one bot user-agent and denies all others, including browsers. The non-www domain (westhillsautoplex.com) redirects to www.westhillsautoplex.com (note the missing 't' in 'westhills'), and both robots.txt and llms.txt return 403 to every requester, making them effectively nonexistent.

Crawler Access

Every AI crawler tested — GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot, Google-Extended, OAI-SearchBot, Applebot-Extended, Bytespider, and ChatGPT-User — receives a 403 from AkamaiGHost on the homepage. Only anthropic-ai passes through to the nginx origin and gets a full 200 response with the complete Dealer.com (DDC) platform HTML. The robots.txt and llms.txt files are inaccessible (403) to all user-agents, meaning no crawler can read crawl directives or AI-specific guidance. The sitemap at /sitemap.xml is also 403 to non-anthropic bots but contains thousands of URLs when accessed as anthropic-ai, including individual vehicle pages and brand-specific service center pages.

Cold-Knowledge Gap

The LLM queried cold about "West Hills Auto Plex" returned no specific knowledge — it could not confirm location, services, or reputation, and guessed it might be in the Pacific Northwest or California. The site itself is a multi-franchise dealership in Bremerton, WA serving Silverdale and Bainbridge Island, selling new and used vehicles across 13+ brands: Kia, Dodge, Hyundai, Honda, Ford, Mazda, Chrysler, Chevrolet, Jeep, Toyota, Volkswagen, GMC, Ram, and Buick. The gap between the LLM's blank slate and the site's actual scale (dozens of brands, full service center, thousands of inventory pages) is extreme — the brand has near-zero AI visibility despite being a substantial regional auto group.

Schema Posture

The homepage and key pages carry no detectable JSON-LD schema in the HTML served to anthropic-ai. The DDC platform injects schema via JavaScript, which means even the one bot that gets through receives a page with zero structured data. The <title> tags are well-formed (e.g., "New & Used Dealership Bremerton WA | Silverdale | Bainbridge Island"), and meta descriptions exist on inventory pages, but no AutoDealer, LocalBusiness, or Product schema is present in the server-rendered HTML. The about/index.htm page returns a 404 — there is no dedicated about page, which is a standard schema anchor point.

External Signals

Web searches for "West Hills Autoplex", "westhillsautoplex.com", and "West Hills Autoplex Bremerton" returned zero results across multiple queries. No reviews, no Reddit threads, no press mentions, no directory listings surfaced. The dealership appears to have no indexed external footprint whatsoever — a striking absence for a multi-franchise operation that has been running long enough to have a lastmod date of May 2026 in its sitemap. The site's DNS shows Microsoft 365 mail (outlook.com) and GoDaddy nameservers, consistent with a small-to-mid-size business, but the Akamai WAF configuration suggests a security posture that has accidentally erased the brand from the open web.

Findings

1. Akamai WAF blocks all AI crawlers except Anthropic High

   Every major AI crawler (GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot, Google-Extended, OAI-SearchBot, Applebot-Extended, Bytespider) receives a 403 from Akamai on the homepage. Only anthropic-ai gets a 200 response with full HTML.

   What to change: Remove the Akamai WAF rule that blocks AI crawler user-agents, or replace it with a robots.txt-based approach that allows all legitimate bots.

2. robots.txt and llms.txt return 403 to all requesters High

   Both robots.txt and llms.txt are inaccessible (403) to any user-agent, meaning no crawler can read crawl directives or AI-specific guidance.

   What to change: Serve a publicly accessible robots.txt that allows all legitimate bots, and create an llms.txt file with AI-relevant guidance.

3. Sitemap blocked for non-Anthropic bots High

   The sitemap at /sitemap.xml returns 403 to non-anthropic bots, preventing discovery of thousands of inventory pages.

   What to change: Allow all legitimate bots to access the sitemap by removing the WAF block on /sitemap.xml.

4. No JSON-LD schema in server-rendered HTML High

   The homepage and key pages contain no detectable JSON-LD schema in the HTML served to anthropic-ai. Schema is injected via JavaScript, which AI crawlers do not execute.

   What to change: Add server-side rendered JSON-LD schema (AutoDealer, LocalBusiness, Product) to all key pages.

5. About page returns 404 Medium

   The about page at /about/index.htm returns a 404, eliminating a standard schema anchor point for LocalBusiness markup.

   What to change: Create a proper about page with business details and LocalBusiness schema.

6. LLM has no knowledge of the dealership High

   An LLM queried about 'West Hills Auto Plex' returned no specific knowledge, unable to confirm location, services, or reputation, despite the site being a multi-franchise dealership in Bremerton, WA.

   What to change: Improve AI visibility by allowing crawlers, adding structured data, and building external citations.

7. Zero external search footprint High

   Web searches for the dealership name and domain returned zero results across multiple queries. No reviews, directory listings, or press mentions were found.

   What to change: Claim and populate business listings on Google Business Profile, Yelp, and other directories; encourage customer reviews.

8. Non-www domain redirects to misspelled www domain Low

   The non-www domain (westhillsautoplex.com) redirects to www.westhillsautoplex.com (missing 't' in 'westhills'), which may cause confusion and canonicalization issues.

   What to change: Ensure the primary domain is consistently used and redirects correctly; consider fixing the spelling if intended.

What's working

• Anthropic bot receives full server-rendered HTML — The anthropic-ai crawler gets a 200 response with 321KB of rendered HTML, including inventory pages and sitemap, allowing some AI visibility.
• Well-formed title tags and meta descriptions — Key pages have descriptive title tags and meta descriptions, which help with search engine snippets.
• Sitemap contains thousands of URLs — The sitemap at /sitemap.xml includes thousands of URLs covering individual vehicle pages and service center pages, providing a comprehensive site structure.