Lens – AI Visibility Monitor

Lens is the first WordPress plugin to score your site on Google Chrome Lighthouse’s new Agentic Browsing readiness category — the taxonomy Chrome uses to measure how ready your site is for AI agents to read and act on. Plus per-page AI bot analytics, crawl-to-citation correlation, and citation tracking against ChatGPT and Perplexity. All with your own OpenAI key. Zero data leaves your database. No SaaS subscription. Free forever.

Unlike traditional SEO plugins, Lens does not try to replace Yoast, Rank Math, AIOSEO or SEOPress. It runs alongside whichever SEO plugin you already use and adds the AI visibility layer none of them cover today.

What makes Lens different

Every other AI-SEO plugin on the market proxies your content through a paid SaaS. Lens is the only one that:

• Logs actual AI bot hits per URL — not inferred from Search Console, not simulated. Real user-agent-matched requests from 18 recognised AI bots (GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot, OAI-SearchBot, Claude-SearchBot, Google-Extended, Meta-ExternalAgent, Applebot-Extended, DeepSeekBot, CCBot, MistralAI-User and more).
• Correlates crawls with citations — cross-references the pages AI bots actually read with the pages the answer engines actually cite. Surfaces zero-efficiency pages that burn training-crawl budget without returning a citation.
• Uses your own OpenAI API key — you pay OpenAI directly. Nothing is proxied through Lens infrastructure. Zero data leaves your WordPress database. The only AI-SEO option regulated / enterprise / privacy-conscious buyers can adopt.
• Understands the training vs retrieval vs assistant distinction — the critical taxonomy most SEO plugins miss. Blocking GPTBot does NOT stop OpenAI from citing you (that’s OAI-SearchBot’s job). Lens is the only plugin that lets you make this decision per category.

Seven pillars

1. AI Crawler Analytics (free, no API key required)

Detects and logs visits from 18+ recognised AI bot families. Dashboard shows per-bot / per-day / per-page breakdowns, blind-spot pages, weekly trend, first-visit alerts.

2. Crawl → Citation efficiency (v1.2.0)

The diagnostic no other WordPress plugin offers. For every crawled URL, Lens shows how many times the answer engines cited it back. Zero-efficiency rows are the actionable priority list.

3. Bot Access Control with training / retrieval / assistant taxonomy (v1.2.1)

Three category cards on the Settings page let you block bots by their actual purpose. Block training crawlers to keep content out of model training data — WITHOUT blocking the retrieval crawlers that create citations. Advanced per-bot override table lets you force allow / force block any single bot.

4. Chrome Lighthouse Agentic Browsing readiness (v1.4.0)

The alignment claim no other WordPress plugin makes. Every AEO scan now runs the same-shape checks Google Chrome ships in its (experimental) Agentic Browsing Lighthouse category:

• Accessibility for agents — every interactive element must have a programmatic name (aria-label, associated , visible text) and must not be hidden from the accessibility tree while remaining focusable.
• WebMCP integration — detects declarative (<script type="application/mcp+json">) or imperative (navigator.webmcp.registerTool) tool registrations. Informational only — WebMCP is experimental in Chrome 150+ with origin trial.
• Discoverability (llms.txt) — checks for the machine-readable summary at your domain root.
• Layout stability (CLS) — informational + a link straight into PageSpeed Insights for the page’s real-user CLS.

Presented as a fractional pass ratio (X of Y checks passed), the same format Chrome uses. A sitewide ”Agentic readiness” KPI appears on the Dashboard next to Citation rate.

5. Per-page AEO scoring (bring your own AI key)

Local checks always run for free: title, meta, headings, FAQ/HowTo/Article schema, image alt coverage, llms.txt entry, internal links, answer-shaped intro, and extractable-passage detection — the primary AEO signal after Google removed FAQ rich results in May 2026. AI-enriched scoring uses your OpenAI key to add a 0–100 citability score with three ranked fixes.

6. Citation tracking (bring your own AI key, opt-in)

Enter up to 10 seed queries. On a schedule you choose, Lens asks OpenAI whether your domain appears in the response. Trend charts of citation rate over time, per query and per provider.

7. Site-wide baseline audit (v1.2.2)

One-click HTML report aggregating every scan, every crawler hit, and every citation check on the site. Score distribution, worst-20 and best-20 pages, blind spots, and prioritised action list. Ideal for agency client onboarding.

Automatic schema markup

Lens emits JSON-LD on every post and page: WebSite, Organization, WebPage, BreadcrumbList, Article (or BlogPosting), plus auto-detected FAQPage, HowTo, ImageObject, VideoObject and SpeakableSpecification. Conflict-detects Yoast / Rank Math / AIOSEO / SEOPress / The SEO Framework — defaults OFF if any are active so you never get duplicate JSON-LD.

Why Lens

• Free forever, no account. Crawler analytics works the moment you activate. No signup, no licence key, no SaaS.
• Your data stays on your site. All logs, scans, citations and schema are generated locally in your WordPress database. Nothing is proxied through our servers.
• BYO API key. You pay OpenAI directly. No middleman markup, no per-scan credit resale.
• Agency-ready reporting. Baseline audit and weekly visibility reports designed for client delivery.
• Open source under GPLv2. Audit the code, fork it, hack on it.

Who it’s for

• Agencies deploying AEO monitoring across many client sites.
• SaaS, e-commerce and publishers competing for AI citations.
• Regulated / enterprise sites (healthcare, legal, finance, government) where SaaS AI-SEO tools cannot be approved by procurement.
• Local businesses chasing AI Overview visibility.
• Developers who want raw crawler data and a REST API.

External services

Lens connects to external services in the following ways. All third-party calls are optional and require you to explicitly provide an API key.

OpenAI API (https://api.openai.com)

• Purpose: Generate per-page AEO scores, suggest fixes, and check citation queries when OpenAI is selected as the citation provider.
• When data is sent: Only when you manually trigger an AI-enriched scan, or when a citation-tracking schedule you have explicitly enabled runs.
• Data sent: Post title and post content (for scans); user-supplied query strings and your site domain (for citation checks). No personal user data is transmitted.
• Consent: Required — you must enter your own OpenAI API key in Lens → Settings → AI Providers. Without a key, no data is sent.
• Privacy policy: https://openai.com/policies/privacy-policy
• Terms of service: https://openai.com/policies/terms-of-use

Lens does not transmit any data to any other external service. Crawler detection happens entirely inside your WordPress install — no external lookup is performed on visiting bots.

Trademark notice

ChatGPT and OpenAI are trademarks of OpenAI. Perplexity is a trademark of Perplexity AI, Inc. Claude and Anthropic are trademarks of Anthropic PBC. Gemini is a trademark of Google LLC. Microsoft Copilot and Bing are trademarks of Microsoft Corporation. Meta AI and LLaMA are trademarks of Meta Platforms, Inc. Apple Intelligence is a trademark of Apple Inc.

Lens is an independent tool. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by any of the above companies. All product names, logos, brands and trademarks mentioned in Lens are the property of their respective owners.