AuditAE AI Search Toolkit

AuditAE bundles the practical wins of “AEO” (Answer Engine Optimization / AI search) into one free plugin. Everything works the moment you activate, with zero signup.

AI Readiness Score. One 0–100 number, with a letter grade, that summarizes how ready your site is to be read and cited by ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and Google AI Overviews — computed entirely from local signals (are citation bots blocked in robots.txt, FAQ and Article schema coverage, Organization schema, unresolved AI-bot 404s, content freshness, llms.txt). Every check that isn’t passing shows exactly what to fix and how many points it’s worth, and the score tracks a 7-day delta so you can see it climb as you ship fixes. Surfaced on its own tab and on the wp-admin Dashboard widget. A companion per-post AI Readiness checklist appears right in the editor sidebar — grading the post you’re writing on an answer-first opening, question-shaped headings, FAQ + structured data, depth, and freshness, so you fix it before you publish.

1. AI Crawler Tracker. Identifies hits from ~30 AI search-engine crawlers — GPTBot, OAI-SearchBot, ChatGPT-User, ClaudeBot, Claude-User, PerplexityBot, Perplexity-User, Google-Extended, Applebot-Extended, Bytespider, CCBot, Meta-ExternalAgent, Bingbot, and more. Get a real-time count of AI bot hits over the last 30 days, a by-bot breakdown with time-since-last-hit per bot, a per-day activity table, top crawled paths, one-click CSV export, and an at-a-glance wp-admin Dashboard widget. A built-in robots.txt audit flags any tracked AI bot your robots.txt is blocking — the silent killer of AI visibility. Answers the question Google Search Console can’t: “Are AI engines actually reading my site?”

2. llms.txt Generator. Serves a live /llms.txt file at the root of your site, conforming to the llmstxt.org spec — a markdown manifest that helps LLM-powered tools find the right pages on your site. Builds defaults automatically from your public post types, with per-section customization, optional links list, and a one-click “Reset to defaults” if you want to start fresh.

3. Schema Graph. Per-post and site-wide schema.org JSON-LD injection. Add structured data for Organization, Article, Product, HowTo, FAQPage, BreadcrumbList — all linked together by @id so AI engines can resolve “this org wrote this article” without guessing. Designed to coexist with Yoast and Rank Math: when one of them is active, AuditAE defers the schema types they already emit (Organization, Article) and only adds the types they don’t, so your pages never carry duplicate structured data.

4. IndexNow auto-ping. When you publish or update a post, the plugin instantly notifies the IndexNow API so Microsoft Bing — and the engines that read its index, including ChatGPT and Copilot retrieval — re-crawl the URL in minutes instead of waiting days to discover it on their own. A site ownership key is generated and served automatically (no manual setup), per-post noindex flags from Yoast/Rank Math are respected, and a “Submit all published URLs” button seeds the index in one shot for sites that installed the plugin after publishing. One submission fans out to Bing, Yandex, Seznam, and Naver.

5. Image filename rename. A “Rename file” action in the Media library turns a generic IMG_4821.jpg into a descriptive, keyword-bearing red-running-shoes.jpg — the filename is one of the few image-SEO signals AI engines and image search actually read. It renames the original and every generated thumbnail size in one move, then rewrites the old URL to the new one inside your existing posts so your live images and srcset never break. Free, no account, gated by your normal WordPress permissions.

Plus FAQ schema injection. A <script type="application/ld+json"> block on singular post views, sourced from question/answer pairs stored in post_meta. Post content is not modified.

No external service is required for any of the above. All data is stored locally in your wp_options table (rolling 500-entry crawler log, no custom database tables, no telemetry).

Optional — pair with AuditAE (auditae.app). AuditAE is a separate paid service that measures whether AI engines cite your brand for the prompts your buyers ask. Pairing this plugin with an AuditAE account lets the AuditAE assistant (AEBOT) also draft posts, update existing posts, edit Yoast/Rank Math meta, manage the schema graph, curate /llms.txt, and edit your images end to end — rename files in bulk across the posts that matter, and write every image field (alt text, title, caption, description) — for you. On sites running the companion AuditAE AI Autopilot theme, AEBOT can additionally edit page copy, brand colors, and structured records (services, locations, FAQs, testimonials, team) in place, and your wp-admin dashboard shows live AI-citation, Analytics, and Search Console figures pulled from your AuditAE account. Pairing is fully optional; everything above remains free regardless. $5 free credit at signup, no subscription.

External Services

This plugin connects to two external services.

IndexNow (https://api.indexnow.org) — On by default; toggle off any time. When the IndexNow feature is enabled, the plugin notifies the IndexNow API each time you publish or update a public post or page (and when you click “Submit all published URLs”). Each request sends only: the URL(s) that changed, your site’s hostname, and a randomly generated site-ownership key (served as a verification file at your site root). No post content, personal data, analytics, or telemetry is transmitted. IndexNow is an open protocol operated by the participating search engines (Microsoft Bing, Yandex, Seznam, Naver); one submission notifies all of them. You can turn auto-ping off under Settings → AuditAE → AI Crawlers.

• IndexNow documentation: https://www.indexnow.org/documentation
• Bing terms of use: https://www.bing.com/webmaster/help/indexnow-faq

AuditAE (https://auditae.app) — Optional, opt-in only. The free features (crawler tracker, llms.txt, schema graph, FAQ schema, IndexNow) do not call AuditAE. The plugin only contacts AuditAE after you pair the site from the “Connect to AuditAE” tab — in two ways, both authenticated over HTTPS with the per-site bearer token you can revoke from the admin at any time:

1. Inbound (AuditAE → your site). The AuditAE service sends authenticated REST API requests to this site to read posts, write drafts, manage schema, or update SEO metadata — only for the capabilities you grant.
2. Outbound (your site → AuditAE). When a paired site runs the companion AuditAE AI Autopilot theme, its wp-admin dashboard requests a small scorecard from https://auditae.app/api/wp/summary to show your AI-citation rate, Google Analytics, and Search Console figures in one place. Each request transmits only your site URL and the bearer token; the response is your own data, cached locally for ~15 minutes. No post content, analytics, or telemetry is sent.

• Terms of service: https://auditae.app/terms
• Privacy policy: https://auditae.app/privacy

The admin UI uses the Instrument Serif typeface, which is bundled locally in assets/fonts/ under the SIL Open Font License 1.1. No font requests are made to Google or any third party.