elthianlabs

In 2026, signaling your “Intent and Consent” to AI models is the new Technical SEO. Elthian AI Licensing Lite provides a professional framework for site owners to publish machine-readable AI usage policies.
Whether your goal is Generative Engine Optimization (GEO)—earning citations in LLM responses—or protecting your IP from unauthorized training, Elthian ensures your site speaks the language of modern AI agents.
<h3>Advanced License Tiers Included:</h3>
<ul>
<li>Elthian-NoAI: Hard prohibition on all AI system use and automated access.</li>
<li>Elthian-NoTrain: The GEO standard. Permits discovery/citation via AI Search but prohibits training and RAG.</li>
<li>Elthian-UseOnly: For Agentic AI. Permits request-bound, ephemeral processing (deleted after use) but prohibits persistent storage.</li>
<li>Elthian-NonCommercial: Enables academic and research use while blocking commercial exploitation.</li>
<li>Elthian-Public: Open access for training and commercial use with attribution. 
<a href="https://elthian.com/licensing/" rel="nofollow ugc">Learn more about the Elthian AI Licensing standards here</a>.</li>
</ul>
<h3>Technical Features:</h3>
<ul>
<li>Standardized llms.txt: Automatically serve the dynamically generated <code>/llms.txt</code> file preferred by AI crawlers.</li>
<li>AI-Specific Sitemap: Dedicated <code>/ai-license-sitemap.xml</code> to help agents discover your citation-ready content.</li>
<li>Global & Per-Post Controls: Set a site-wide policy or override permissions for specific premium content.</li>
<li>Robots.txt Integration: Appends standard directives (noai, noimageai) based on your selected license.</li>
<li>Well-known JSON Endpoint: Implements the <code>.well-known/ai-policy.json</code> technical standard.</li>
<li>License Badge: Professional human-visible notice to inform visitors of your AI usage rights.</li>
</ul>
A separate Pro plugin is available with additional policy and analytics features: 
<a href="https://elthianlabs.com/plugins/ai-licensing/" rel="nofollow ugc">Learn more about Elthian AI Licensing Pro</a>.
<h3>External services</h3>
This plugin can optionally connect to the Elthian API (api.elthian.com) to register or sync your site’s AI policy declaration.
The external service is disabled by default. No policy data is sent to Elthian unless a site administrator enables Registry Sync or manually initiates a sync.
What the service is used for:
<ul>
<li>To sync the site’s machine-readable AI policy declaration with Elthian’s external registry.</li>
<li>To make the site’s declared AI usage policy discoverable outside the local WordPress installation.</li>
</ul>
What data is sent and when: 
* Data is sent only when Registry Sync is enabled by an administrator, or when an administrator manually initiates a sync. 
* The data sent may include the site ID, site URL, selected policy, policy scopes, URL overrides, timestamp, policy hash or policy identifier, plugin version, WordPress version, PHP version, timezone, and published content count. 
* Post content, page content, comments, user accounts, and customer data are not sent as part of the policy sync.
Service provider:
<ul>
<li>Elthian</li>
</ul>
Terms of service:
<ul>
<li>https://elthianlabs.com/legal/terms/</li>
</ul>
Privacy policy:
<ul>
<li>https://elthianlabs.com/legal/privacy/</li>
</ul>

Elthian AI Licensing Lite

Manage how AI models interact with your content. Implements llms.txt, robots.txt, AI Sitemaps, and machine-readable JSON policies.

Known Agents

Track crawlers, scrapers, LLM assistants, and AI agents on your website. Generate a robots.txt that blocks AI bots. Formerly Dark Visitors.
<h3>Track, control, and optimize your website for AI agents and bots</h3>
You have <a href="https://knownagents.com/insights" rel="nofollow ugc">40% more visitors than you think</a>. Protect your content from unwanted AI scraping, and turn the rising wave of AI agents, LLM assistants, and other bots visiting your website into a new growth channel for your business. For full details, visit the <a href="https://knownagents.com/" rel="nofollow ugc">Known Agents</a> website.
<h3>1. AI Agent & Bot Analytics</h3>
Get realtime visibility into the hidden ecosystem of crawlers, scrapers, and AI agents browsing your website
<ul>
<li>Watch traffic from crawlers and scrapers as it happens: Track the hidden activity of <a href="https://knownagents.com/agents" rel="nofollow ugc">all known artificial agents</a> visiting your website in real time.</li>
<li>Replay AI agent navigation patterns: Follow a single agent’s session as it navigates your website. Find where agents get stuck, identify dead ends, and help them complete their tasks.</li>
<li>Catch bots spoofing legitimate agents: Identify bad actors and unauthorized scrapers pretending to be legitimate agents like Googlebot or Bingbot.</li>
<li>Never miss a bot traffic spike: Stay informed when an agent’s traffic starts surging or overloading your server.</li>
<li>Reveal which agents visit most, and which pages they target: Break down bot traffic by page to understand what they’re interested in.</li>
<li>Export reports to CSV: Download agent activity reports for custom analysis.</li>
</ul>
<h3>2. LLM Citation & Referral Tracking (GEO, AEO)</h3>
Measure citations and human click-throughs from AI chat platforms like ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini
<ul>
<li>Increase citations in AI chat responses: See which pages LLMs recommend most often. Double down on content that’s working.</li>
<li>Find out which AI platforms are sending you traffic: Measure how many humans are clicking through to your website from a citation.</li>
<li>Export reports to CSV: Download LLM referral reports for custom analysis.</li>
</ul>
<h3>3. Automatic Robots.txt & Bad Bot Detection</h3>
Protect your content and reduce server cost by serving a robots.txt that updates continuously
<ul>
<li>Set robots.txt rules for entire categories of bots: Control access for entire agent categories including AI crawlers, scrapers, SEO bots, and more. One selection covers every current and future agent in that group.</li>
<li>We track new bots, you don’t have to: Your robots.txt is updated as new agents emerge, so you never have to manage them yourself or make manual edits.</li>
<li>Block misbehaving crawlers and scrapers: Detect and block bots that ignore your robots.txt rules using the WordPress plugin, or our automation detectors.</li>
</ul>
<h3>Demos</h3>
Demos can be found on the <a href="https://knownagents.com/" rel="nofollow ugc">home page</a>.
<h3>Further Details</h3>
This plugin connects your website to <a href="https://knownagents.com/" rel="nofollow ugc">Known Agents</a>. It uses the Known Agents API to connect to your account and provide functionality.
By signing up, you agree to the <a href="https://knownagents.com/terms-of-service" rel="nofollow ugc">Terms of Service</a> and <a href="https://knownagents.com/privacy-policy" rel="nofollow ugc">Privacy Policy</a>.
Are you finding this plugin useful? Please <a href="https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/dark-visitors/reviews/#new-post" rel="ugc">leave us a ★★★★★ review</a>! Questions or issues? <a href="https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/dark-visitors/" rel="ugc">Ask us for help</a>.

Known Agents – Track AI Bots and Crawlers, Block Scrapers, Analyze LLM Referral Traffic


Please remind me in a month to provide an update on the performance of this plugin on a heavily visited website.


Begun my review...


An easy improvement would be to link to the settings page from the plugin entry like other plugins, other than that, in general this plugin and its online dashboard is generally well thought out and useful. My website is small and has limited resources that get overrun by crawlers making it unavailable. This plugin helps identify the culprits and decide if I should block them or not. For free you can block them in robots.txt, as I have a physical file, the plugin won't touch that but its easy to add manually. It will report those crawlers that ignore the robots file and the paid version will enforce those rules, but I just update ".htaccess" myself.



I'm reducing my rating by a star since you won't get much "Agent Analytics" (per month) and for my tiny site it quickly ran out, we are a NFP so don't have money to burn on subscriptions.  The the description for the plan incorrectly states "Unlimited Agent Analytics" when the plan only includes 100,000 events.


Very Useful Plugin


Very good: shows all bot-crawlers.Our website was sometimes down due to bot-crawlers, with this tool it is easy to solve. Very good logging of bots.This was the only good plugin I could find for this purpose.Some bots ignore robots.txt. So I manually changed htaccess, that worked very good.


Very very helpful

Track crawlers, scrapers, LLM assistants, and AI agents on your website. Generate a robots.txt that blocks AI bots. Formerly Dark Visitors.

Elthian AI Licensing Lite vs Known Agents – Track AI Bots and Crawlers, Block Scrapers, Analyze LLM Referral Traffic