AI Search Optimizer – WordPress Plugin for AI Citations

CiteWP AI Search Optimizer is the WordPress plugin that makes your content visible to AI search engines. Detect AI crawlers, generate llms.txt, score every post for AI citability, and track which pages get cited. Built by a WordPress developer with 15 years in SEO.

Install free on WordPress.org

Free forever · No account required · Works with Yoast, Rank Math, AIOSEO

CiteWP Cite Score sidebar showing a 100-point AI citation readiness score broken down across Structure, Citability, and Authority categories with individual signal scores.

AI Search Optimizer is a free WordPress plugin by CiteWP built for bloggers, content marketers, and site owners who publish regularly and want their pages cited by AI search engines — not just ranked on Google. It scores every post and page from 0–100 for AI citation readiness (that score is called Cite Score), detects visits from AI crawlers like GPTBot and ClaudeBot, auto-generates an llms.txt file so AI systems can parse your site structure, and tracks which pages appear as cited sources in AI responses. No account or API keys required. Installs from WordPress.org and works alongside Yoast, Rank Math, and AIOSEO.

THE GAP

SEO got you ranked. AI search is rewriting the rules.

ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Claude now answer a big chunk of searches directly. No list of ten links — one synthesized answer, a few cited sources, everything else ignored. When someone asks a question you should be answering, your site either gets named or it doesn’t. There’s no page-two. And right now, most WordPress sites have no idea which way that’s going for them.

Abstract visualization of AI search selecting and citing a few content sources while other pages remain unselected.
Side-by-side illustration comparing traditional SEO ranking signals with AI-focused content citation signals and extractable answers.

Yoast, Rank Math, every traditional SEO tool — built to win at Google. Keyword density, backlinks, page speed. Still matters. But none of that tells you whether ChatGPT will cite your page when someone asks a question you should own. A page can rank #1 and never show up in an AI answer. The content signals are different. Most SEO tools don’t touch them.

810 million people use ChatGPT every day. Google’s AI Overviews hit 1.5 billion monthly users. Not experimental — mainstream. Somewhere between 60% and 93% of those searches end without a click because the answer lands on-screen and the user is done. For site owners, that’s a real shift. Being cited inside the AI answer is starting to count more than being ranked third in the list nobody scrolls to.

Dashboard illustration showing a Cite Score, AI crawler activity, content recommendations, and AI citation optimization metrics.

Why AI search visibility matters now

AI search isn’t replacing Google — it’s changing where answers come from. Millions of searches now end without a click, making citations inside AI answers a new source of visibility

810+M

Daily AI search users

Roughly 810+ Million people use ChatGPT every day.

60%-93%

Zero-Click Answers

AI Search Engines produce zero-click rates between 60%-93%.

70%

AI answer change over time

AI overview content changes for roughly 70% of queries over time.

AI search has moved from novelty to mainstream behavior. As of 2026, roughly 810 million people use ChatGPT daily, and Google’s AI Overviews reach about 1.5 billion monthly users. The shift changes how often a search even produces a click: AI search engines including ChatGPT Search, Perplexity, and Google’s AI Mode produce zero-click rates between 60% and 93%, because they’re designed to answer questions directly rather than send users to a list of links. For website owners, that means being cited inside the answer increasingly matters more than ranking in a list beneath it. (Source: New User Approve Phind)


The competition for those citations is real and measurable. ChatGPT accounts for an estimated 55–60% of AI-native referral traffic, followed by Perplexity at 18–22%, Gemini at 10–14%, and Microsoft Copilot at 6–9%. Citations also don’t last: AI Overview content changes for roughly 70% of queries over time, and when answers update, nearly half of the cited sources are replaced. Visibility in AI search is something you earn continuously, not once. (Source: Search Engine Journal Exposure Ninja)


Most sites can’t even see this activity happening. A Spark Toro study from January 2026 found that only 12–18% of Perplexity citations result in actual click-through traffic, meaning 82–88% of the time a brand is cited, no one visits the site — the citation happened, but standard analytics never recorded it. This is the gap CiteWP AI Search Optimizer is built to close: it detects which AI crawlers visit your site, scores your content for citation-readiness, and shows you what to improve, so you’re optimizing for a channel most tools can’t even measure. (Source: UpGrowth)

WHAT YOU GET

Built for the AI search era.

Six capabilities that turn WordPress content into AI-citable content.

AI Crawler Detection

See exactly which AI bots — GPT, Claude, Perplexity, and others — are visiting your site, when, and what they’re reading.

llms.txt Generation

Auto-Generate the llms.txt file AI engines use to discover and prioritize your content. Updated automatically as you publish.

Cite Score

Every post gets a 0–100 score showing how citable it is to AI engines, with specific recommendations to improve.

Citation Tracking – Pro Account

Track how often your content gets cited by AI engines and which pages are performing. Use that to optimize your posts and pages.

Works with your SEO stack

Designed to complement Yoast, Rank Math, and AIOSEO — not replace them. SEO gets you ranked. CiteWP gets you cited.

Privacy First

All processing happens on your server. No tracking, no external API calls, no data leaves your site without permission.

PRICING

Start free. Upgrade when you’re ready.

The free plugin includes everything you need to start tracking AI citations. Pro adds depth for sites that need it.

FREE
$0
  • AI crawler detection and logs
  • Automatic llms.txt generation
  • Cite Score for your top pages
  • Recommendations engine
  • WordPress.org community support
Download on wordpress.org
PRO
Launch Price Coming!
  • Site-wide scoring (unlimited pages)
  • Historical trends and reporting
  • Competitor citation monitoring
  • Automated content suggestions
  • Priority email support
Join THE Waitlist
HOW IT WORKS

Install in 60 seconds.

No account creation, no API keys, no setup wizard. Active out of the box.

01

Install

Download from WordPress.org or upload the zip. Activate. No account, no API keys, no setup wizard.

02

Crawlers detected immediately

CiteWP begins logging AI bot visits the moment it’s active. Within 24 hours you’ll see your first crawler data.

03

Score and improve

Open any post or page to see its Cite Score and specific recommendations. Implement changes, watch citations grow.

FAQ

Questions about AI Search Optimizer

Everything you need to know before installing.

Yes. AI Search Optimizer runs alongside Yoast, Rank Math, SEO Press, and All in One SEO without conflict. Traditional SEO plugins optimize how Google ranks your pages. AI Search Optimizer focuses on a different problem — whether ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, and Google’s AI Overviews actually cite your content when answering questions. The two work together: keep your existing SEO plugin for search rankings, and add AI Search Optimizer for AI citation visibility.

No. AI Search Optimizer adds zero frontend load. All processing — crawler detection, scoring, recommendations — runs in the WordPress admin and on background tasks. No scripts, stylesheets, or tracking code are added to your public pages. The only file served to AI crawlers is your llms.txt, which is a static text file generated on demand and cached.

The plugin tracks visits from the major AI training and retrieval bots: GPTBot and OAI-SearchBot (OpenAI), ClaudeBot (Anthropic), PerplexityBot, Google-Extended, Bytespider (TikTok), CCBot (Common Crawl), Meta-ExternalAgent, and Applebot-Extended (Apple Inc.) The detection list updates as new crawlers emerge, and you can see exactly which bots have visited your site, when, and which pages they fetched in the Crawler Logs view.

llms.txt is an emerging standard — similar to robots.txt — that tells AI systems which pages on your site are most worth reading. Instead of letting crawlers guess what matters, you give them a curated map of your highest-value content with short descriptions. AI Search Optimizer generates and maintains this file automatically based on your site structure, and lets you control which pages are included, excluded, or featured. Sites with a well-formed llms.txt are easier for AI tools to parse, summarize, and cite accurately.

Cite Score is a 0–100 measure of how citable your content is to AI systems. It evaluates each post and page against the structural and semantic signals that AI models actually use when extracting answers — things like clear headings, factual density, source attribution, schema markup, content freshness, and answer-shaped passages. Each page receives a score plus specific recommendations to improve it. The methodology is documented in full inside the plugin under Settings → About Cite Score.

The free plugin on WordPress.org includes everything you need to start: AI crawler detection and logs, automatic llms.txt generation, Cite Score for your top pages, and the recommendations engine. The Pro tier at citewp.com adds site-wide scoring across unlimited pages, historical trend tracking, competitor citation monitoring, automated content suggestions, and priority support. You can use the free plugin indefinitely — Pro is for sites that want deeper analytics and automation.

All crawler logs, scores, and recommendations are stored in your own WordPress database. Nothing is sent to external servers in the free version. The Pro tier optionally syncs scoring data to citewp.com for historical trending and cross-site dashboards — that sync is opt-in, encrypted in transit, and you can export or delete your data at any time. Your content itself is never copied or transmitted.

Free plugin users can post in the WordPress.org support forum, where issues are typically answered within a few business days. Pro subscribers get email support with a 24-hour response target and direct access to the development roadmap. Documentation, setup guides, and troubleshooting are at citewp.com/docs.

CITEWP PRO

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