Erik

<p>The <strong>md4AI</strong> plugin provides a powerful, multi-layered approach to Generative Engine Optimization (GEO).</p>
<h3>1. Automatic AI Bot Detection (Zero-Config)</h3>
<p>md4AI automatically detects requests from a comprehensive list of known AI agents (like GPTBot, ClaudeBot, Google-Extended, etc.) and serves them a lightweight, on-the-fly Markdown version of your content instead of the standard HTML theme. This ensures a clean, parsable data feed for LLMs right out of the box.</p>
<h3>2. Per-Post Custom Markdown (Metabox)</h3>
<p>The plugin adds a new metabox to your post and page editor, giving you full control over the AI-optimized version of your content.<br />
Serving an md version of the website is particular useful if your website has editors like Elementor / Beaver Builder / Divi Builder / other div bloated editors because bots usually skips complex and too much nested content.</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>Generate Custom Markdown:</strong> Convert your post’s content into Markdown with one click.</li>
<li><strong>Manually Edit:</strong> Modify and enhance the Markdown to be exactly as you want AIs to see it.</li>
<li><strong>(Optional) Enhance with AI:</strong> If you also use the <strong><a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/ai-services/" rel="ugc">AI Services</a></strong> plugin, you can use the “Generate with AI” button to automatically add FAQs, discussion questions, or key takeaways extracted from your post.</li>
<li><strong>Serve Enhanced Content:</strong> When an AI bot visits this <em>specific post</em>, it will be served your new, custom-tailored Markdown version, giving it far richer data.</li>
<li><strong>Automatic Fallback:</strong> If you don’t create a custom version, the plugin falls back to the automatic on-the-fly conversion.</li>
</ul>
<h3>3. Site-Wide AI Instructions (llms.txt)</h3>
<p>The plugin adds a new main page under ‘Utilities’ with dedicated tabs for configuration and insights. From here, you can create and manage a <code>llms.txt</code> file for your entire site.</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>What is <code>llms.txt</code>?</strong> This is a file, similar to <code>robots.txt</code>, that provides general instructions, context, and useful links to AI crawlers. It’s a new standard to help guide LLMs in understanding your site’s content and purpose.</li>
<li><strong>Manage Content:</strong> Use the settings page to write your <code>llms.txt</code> content, which will then be served automatically to bots that look for it.</li>
<li><strong>Learn More:</strong> You can find more details on this new standard at <a href="https://llmstxt.org/" rel="nofollow ugc">https://llmstxt.org/</a>.</li>
</ul>
<p>This combination gives you full control, from automatic optimization to granular, AI-enhanced, per-post content and site-wide AI directives.</p>
<h3>4. GEO/AIO Insights & Validation</h3>
<p>The dedicated GEO/AIO Insights tab provides a unique validation mechanism for your site’s AI presence, offering measurable scores (0-100) on how well your brand is understood by Generative Engines.</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>The Validation Process</strong>: We ask a Large Language Model (LLM) to complete a “knowledge card” about your site (e.g., brand name, main topics, product categories).</li>
<li><strong>Ground Truth Check</strong>: The AI response is immediately compared with real data extracted from your WordPress database (e.g., site title, author names, WooCommerce categories)</li>
<li><strong>Final Score</strong>: Based on this cross-check, the insight provides a score for brand identity and technical relevance, highlighting exactly where the AI provided incorrect or insufficient data (hallucinations or missing data).</li>
</ul>


md4AI

Optimise content for generative engines (GEO) by serving custom Markdown and a site-wide llms.txt.

gavindarkvisitors

<p>Track crawlers, scrapers, LLM assistants, and AI agents on your website. Generate a robots.txt that blocks AI bots. Formerly Dark Visitors.</p>
<h3>Track, control, and optimize your website for AI agents and bots</h3>
<p>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 crawling, and turn the rising wave of AI agents, LLM assistants, and other bots crawling 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.</p>
<h3>1. Agent Analytics</h3>
<p>Get realtime insight into the hidden ecosystem of crawlers, scrapers, and AI agents browsing your website.</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>Monitor traffic from crawlers and scrapers</strong>: 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><strong>Analyze how AI agents browse your website</strong>: Review sessions from AI models autonomously navigating and interacting with your website. Optimize their experience to increase conversions and human referrals.</li>
<li><strong>Detect bots spoofing legitimate agents</strong>: Identify bad actors and unauthorized scrapers pretending to be legitimate agents like Googlebot or Bingbot.</li>
<li><strong>Get alerted to bot traffic spikes</strong>: Stay informed when an agent’s traffic starts surging or overloading your server.</li>
<li><strong>See which agents visit most frequently and which pages they target</strong>: Break down bot traffic by agent and URL to understand where crawlers and scrapers are focused.</li>
<li><strong>Export reports to CSV</strong>: Download agent activity reports for custom analysis.</li>
</ul>
<h3>2. LLM Referral Tracking</h3>
<p>Measure human conversions from AI chat and search platforms like ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude, and more.</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>Find out which AI platforms are sending you traffic</strong>: See which LLMs are recommending your website and measure how many humans click through to visit.</li>
<li><strong>Export reports to CSV</strong>: Download LLM referral reports for custom analysis.</li>
</ul>
<h3>3. Automatic Robots.txt</h3>
<p>Protect IP, reduce server cost, and save time by serving a robots.txt that updates continuously.</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>Block crawlers and scrapers by category</strong>: 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><strong>Stop tracking new bots manually</strong>: Your robots.txt is updated as new agents emerge, so you never have to manage them yourself or make manual edits.</li>
<li><strong>Enforce robots.txt rules with the WordPress plugin</strong>: The WordPress plugin detects and blocks bots that ignore your robots.txt rules, protecting your content from unauthorized access.</li>
</ul>
<h3>Demos</h3>
<p>Demos can be found on the <a href="https://knownagents.com/" rel="nofollow ugc">home page</a>.</p>
<h3>Further Details</h3>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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>.</p>
<p>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>! Otherwise, please <a href="https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/dark-visitors/" rel="ugc">ask us for help</a>.</p>


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.

md4AI vs Known Agents – Track AI Bots and Crawlers, Block Scrapers, Analyze LLM Referral Traffic