Description
Is your website ready for the AI search revolution? AI Visibility Control is the ultimate tool for webmasters to control how Large Language Models (LLMs), AI bots, and conversational search platforms index their content.
This lightweight, highly optimized plugin allows you to block data-scraping AI crawlers while optimizing your content for friendly AI search engines, and tracking the exact traffic they refer back to your site.
Why Users Need This Plugin
As AI search engines like ChatGPT, Claude, and Perplexity become mainstream, they crawl your website to train models and answer user queries. Traditional robots.txt files do not make it easy to manage these new crawlers. AI Visibility Control solves this by giving you a central control panel to configure crawler rules, output search-optimized summaries, and monitor referred traffic.
What Makes This Plugin Different
Unlike standard robots.txt editors or massive security suites, AI Visibility Control is built specifically for the AI era. It is 100% self-contained, requires no external API keys, does not track your admin activity, and runs locally. It features:
1. AI crawler settings: Toggle switches to block specific bots (like GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot, etc.) dynamically.
2. llms.txt standard: Generates dynamic plain-text markdown cataloging your public pages to optimize AI ingestion.
3. Local AI traffic analytics: Tracks incoming visits from AI platforms locally without bloating your database.
Key Features
- Automatic llms.txt Generator: Generates a standard
/llms.txtfile containing your site title, description, and a structured list of your public posts and pages. - Transient Caching: Caches the llms.txt output to ensure instant page load times and automatically flushes the cache when content is saved or updated.
- Crawler Bot Block Manager: Checkbox controls to block GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot, Google-Extended, CCBot, Amazonbot, and Applebot-Extended in your virtual robots.txt.
- AI Referral Logger: Sniffs referrers from ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Gemini, Copilot, and Bard, logging them into a custom database table.
- GDPR-Compliant IP Hashing: Hashes visitor IP addresses to protect user privacy and comply with GDPR regulations.
- Referral Logger Debounce: Uses a 5-minute transient debounce check to prevent duplicate entries and keep your database clean.
- Automated Health Checks: Runs diagnostics on pretty permalinks, loopback reachability, robots.txt, and search engine visibility.
- Diagnostic Tools: Rebuild cache, clear log entries, export logs as a CSV file, and reset setting options with a single click.
Screenshots
Installation
- Upload the
tbsh-ai-visibility-controlfolder to the/wp-content/plugins/directory, or install directly through the WordPress admin panel. - Activate the plugin through the ‘Plugins’ menu in WordPress.
- Navigate to Settings > AI Visibility Control to configure crawler access and view logs.
FAQ
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Does this plugin require any external API keys or accounts?
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No. The plugin is 100% self-contained, runs entirely on your local server, and requires no external APIs or accounts.
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What is the llms.txt file and why does my site need it?
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The
llms.txtfile is an emerging web standard that provides LLM crawlers with a lightweight, clean, markdown-formatted directory of your site’s content. This ensures AI search platforms read and attribute your content accurately. -
Which AI search bots can I block using this plugin?
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You can block GPTBot (OpenAI), ClaudeBot (Anthropic), PerplexityBot, Google-Extended, CCBot (Common Crawl), Amazonbot, and Applebot-Extended.
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Does this plugin override my existing robots.txt rules?
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No. The plugin hooks into the native WordPress
robots_txtfilter and only appends crawler rules at the bottom of the output, leaving existing rules generated by other plugins completely intact. -
How does the referral logging system work?
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When a visitor arrives at your site, the plugin checks the HTTP Referrer header. If the visitor was referred by an AI platform (like ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Gemini, Copilot, or Bard), it logs the timestamp, referrer source, and the requested page URL.
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Does the referral tracking comply with GDPR/privacy laws?
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Yes. The plugin does not store raw IP addresses or personal user data in the database. IP addresses are hashed using MD5 during the transient check to prevent duplicate entries and then discarded.
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How does the 5-minute debounce check work?
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To prevent database bloat, when a visitor from an AI source clicks multiple links or refreshes a page within 5 minutes, the plugin only records the first visit. This is handled using transient cache keys.
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Will this plugin slow down my website?
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No. The plugin is lightweight, loads admin assets only on its settings page, utilizes transient caching for database queries, and has no frontend CSS or JavaScript files.
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Do I need custom permalinks enabled to use this plugin?
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Yes. Pretty permalinks (e.g. Post Name) must be active under Settings > Permalinks so the custom virtual routing for
/llms.txtworks correctly. -
What happens if my llms.txt cache is not rebuilt?
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The
llms.txtcache is managed automatically. It is cleared and rebuilt whenever you save, edit, publish, or trash a post or page, ensuring it is always up to date. -
How do I manually rebuild the llms.txt cache?
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You can click the “Rebuild Cache” button on either the llms.txt tab or the Tools tab in the plugin settings.
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Can I export the logged AI referral traffic details?
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Yes. Under the Tools tab, you can click “Download CSV” to download a spreadsheet containing all logged referral visits.
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What happens to my data when I delete the plugin?
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By default, database logs are preserved. However, you can toggle the “Completely Remove Data on Deletion” setting under the Tools tab so all data is wiped when uninstalling.
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Is this plugin compatible with WooCommerce and SEO plugins?
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Yes. The plugin is fully compatible with WooCommerce, Yoast SEO, Rank Math, AIOSEO, and page builders like Elementor or Divi.
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Is there a Pro version available, and what does it add?
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This is the free version. It contains all the core tools to block bots and log traffic. Future premium updates will offer advanced crawl firewalls, WooCommerce AI attribution, and full content markdown exports.
Reviews
There are no reviews for this plugin.
Contributors & Developers
“AI Visibility Control – Dynamic llms.txt & robots.txt Crawler Control” is open source software. The following people have contributed to this plugin.
Contributors
Interested in development?
Browse the code, check out the SVN repository, or subscribe to the development log by RSS.
Changelog
1.0.2
- Updated plugin tags in readme.txt for better discoverability on WordPress.org.
1.0.1
- Updated readme.txt with accurate screenshot descriptions for all seven plugin screens.
1.0.0
- Initial release.
- Automated llms.txt markdown generation with transients caching.
- AI bot control settings using robots_txt filters.
- Non-blocking database logging with GDPR-compliant IP hashing and 5-minute debounce checks.
- Diagnostics health checking and maintenance tools.