DNZ Citation Readiness Checker

Description

Search is changing. AI Overviews, ChatGPT, Perplexity, and other AI answer engines now summarize and cite sources directly on the results page — and research shows that many of the pages they cite don’t even rank in the traditional top 10 organic results.

DNZ Citation Readiness Checker adds a simple checklist to the WordPress block editor sidebar, so you can see — while you’re writing, not after you publish — whether a post is structured in a way that AI systems are more likely to cite.

What it checks

• Direct-answer opening — does your post open with a clear, direct sentence, or does the answer get buried under an intro?
• Question-style headings — are any of your H2/H3 headings phrased as real questions, matching how people ask AI tools?
• Meta summary / excerpt — is a clear excerpt set, giving search and AI systems a clean description to draw from?
• Content depth — is there enough substance (roughly 300+ words) to be worth citing as a source?
• Freshness — has the post been updated recently? Research shows recently-updated content is cited significantly more often than stale content.
• Structured format — does the post use lists or tables where it makes sense? Structured formats are cited more often than plain prose.

Each check gives a plain-English pass/warn/missing status and a specific suggestion — no jargon, no vague scores.

What this plugin does not do

To be transparent about scope: this plugin only checks on-page content factors that are visible from inside the post editor. It does not check or affect off-page factors like backlinks, domain authority, page speed, or third-party review platform presence — all of which also influence AI citation likelihood, but are outside what a content editor tool can evaluate. Think of this as one part of a broader AI-visibility strategy, not the whole picture.

Privacy

This plugin runs entirely inside your WordPress admin editor. It does not send any data to external servers, does not call any third-party API, and does not track or collect any information about you or your site.