Resolve style detection failures

The Bazaarvoice Style Detector helps automate your site's design integration by viewing design elements just like a standard web browser. In some cases, modern security tools like Web Application Firewalls (WAF) or Content Delivery Networks (CDN) may misidentify this automated process as unauthorized traffic and block it. To ensure a seamless setup, your support team simply needs to configure your site's security settings to recognize and trust Bazaarvoice traffic.

Technical instructions

Why style detection fails

When the Style Detector runs, it loads your page using a browser automation flow. To prevent abuse, websites and mobile applications often implement bot protection policies such as WAF, CDN, or bot management systems. These may block or challenge the Style Detector's requests with CAPTCHA, JavaScript challenge, HTTP 403 errors, or interstitial pages. When this happens, style detection fails.

Identify trusted Style Detector traffic

Your technical team can use these specific signals to identify and permit Style Detector requests:

Use the User-Agent token as your primary identifier, and treat the custom header as a secondary signal.

Enable Style Detector access

Step 1: Confirm the block is bot protection-related

1. Run style detection for the target URL.
2. Review the error message returned by Style Detector.
3. If the message indicates a bot challenge (for example, "Bot challenge detected while loading the page"), proceed with allowlisting.

Step 2: Share request details with your Technical team

Provide your technical team with the following technical details:

• User-Agent token: BV-Decon-StyleDetector/1.0
• Header: BV-Decon-StyleDetector: 1.0
• Target URL: The specific URL where style detection is failing

Step 3: Create an authorization rule

Your technical team should implement a rule to permit requests that match these criteria:

• User-Agent contains BV-Decon-StyleDetector/1.0
• (Optional) Custom header BV-Decon-StyleDetector=1.0

Note: >Apply this bypass to:

• Bot management or challenge flows
• CAPTCHA or interstitial pages
• JavaScript computation challenges
• Aggressive rate-limiting rules, if style detection volume triggers them

Step 4: Verify header configuration

Your technical team should confirm the following:

• Upstream proxy, load balancer, or CDN does not strip the X-BV-StyleDetector header
• The User-Agent and custom header remain unchanged at the enforcement point
• Rule evaluation occurs at the layer where the challenge is applied

Step 5: Retest style detection

After the allow rule is deployed:

1. Re-run style detection on the previously failing URL.
2. Verify that Style Detector can fetch HTML without encountering a challenge.
3. Confirm that styles return successfully in the Bazaarvoice UI.

Step 6: Escalate if still blocked

If connectivity issues persist after these updates, contact Bazaarvoice Support for further investigation.

Implementation best practices

When setting up the allow rule, follow these guidelines:

• Use targeted allow rules for only the required paths or domains, not a broad global bypass.
• If using multiple security vendors (for example, CDN plus a downstream WAF), apply the rule at the layer where the challenge is being enforced.
• Keep normal protections for all other traffic. The bypass should match only the Decon signature.
• Re-validate the rule after major WAF policy updates or migration events.