Contrary to the docs which state that the bots are not blocked by default, the logic for blocking bots does the opposite. In mod.speedy.php on line 974 there is this code. This line is the same in version 1.7.0.

// Block bot traffic
 if (ee()->config->item('speedy_block_bots') !== 'no' && $this->isBot()) {
     return false;
}

If there is not a config item for ‘speedy_block_bots’, then it will return false resulting in the statement “false !== ‘no’‘’ which reads as true. I noticed this error because I loaded the addon onto production without this tag and I was consistently getting slow page loads but randomly. After some digging I realized they were all search bots, so I added in $config[‘speedy_block_bots’] = “no”; and this fixed the issue.

The above code should be rewritten to:

$speedy_block_bots = ee()->config->item('speedy_block_bots');
 if ($speedy_block_bots  && $speedy_block_bots !== 'no' && $this->isBot()) {
     return false;
}