Title: Forge AI Bot Log – AI Crawler Detection, Verification & Blocking Author: forgecreative Published: July 28, 2026 Last modified: July 28, 2026 --- Search plugins ![](https://s.w.org/plugins/geopattern-icon/forge-ai-bot-log.svg) # Forge AI Bot Log – AI Crawler Detection, Verification & Blocking By [forgecreative](https://profiles.wordpress.org/forgeonline/) [Download](https://downloads.wordpress.org/plugin/forge-ai-bot-log.1.2.2.zip) * [Details](https://wordpress.org/plugins/forge-ai-bot-log/#description) * [Reviews](https://wordpress.org/plugins/forge-ai-bot-log/#reviews) * [Installation](https://wordpress.org/plugins/forge-ai-bot-log/#installation) * [Development](https://wordpress.org/plugins/forge-ai-bot-log/#developers) [Support](https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/forge-ai-bot-log/) ## Description **Any script can claim to be GPTBot. This plugin checks whether it really is.** Most AI bot trackers read the user-agent string and take it at face value — so a scraper that sends `User-agent: GPTBot` gets logged as OpenAI. Forge AI Bot Log verifies each visit against the crawler’s own published infrastructure using forward- confirmed reverse DNS — the technique Google, OpenAI and Anthropic recommend for confirming their own crawlers — and labels every hit **Verified** or **Spoofed**. You find out which AI traffic genuinely came from OpenAI, and which was something else wearing its name. Verification covers every crawler that publishes a way to check it, including OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Perplexity, Amazon, Apple and Meta. Bots with no published verification method are labelled honestly rather than guessed at. Beyond verification, **Forge AI Bot Log** shows you exactly which AI crawlers and assistants are visiting your WordPress site — GPTBot, ClaudeBot, Google-Extended, PerplexityBot, Bytespider and many more — and explains what each one actually does. #### Key features * **Live dashboard** — bot visits for the last 24 hours, 7 days, 30 days, plus a complete searchable log. * **Bot directory** — click any bot for a plain-English explanation of who owns it, whether it trains AI models / powers AI search / fetches pages live, and whether it obeys robots.txt. * **Most-crawled content** — see which of your pages AI bots are reading most. * **Verified / Spoofed labelling** — forward-confirmed reverse DNS on every tracked hit, so impersonators are flagged instead of trusted. Results are cached and throttled to keep it off the critical path. * **Access control** — block or allow each bot with one click (writes robots.txt rules), plus a hard-block .htaccess snippet for bots that ignore robots.txt. * **Monthly email summary** — sent to the site admin on the 1st of each month at 9am, covering the previous month. * **New-bot alerts** — optional email the first time a brand-new AI bot appears. * **Reliable capture** — an in-PHP logger, an optional must-use early logger, and a server access-log importer for sites behind full-page caching or a CDN. * **Privacy-friendly** — only logs bots (not human visitors), with optional IP anonymisation and configurable data retention. * **CSV export** — download the full or filtered activity log for your own analysis. #### Why it matters AI crawlers may use your content to train models, cite you in AI search answers, or read your pages on a user’s behalf. Forge AI Bot Log makes that traffic visible and gives you the controls to manage it. ### External services Cross-promotion feed (optional). If you enter a promo feed URL in Settings, the plugin fetches that URL to populate the “more plugins” block in its own emails. Only the request is made; no site, user, or visitor data is transmitted. No feed URL is configured by default. ## Installation 1. Upload the `forge-ai-bot-log` folder to `/wp-content/plugins/`, or install via Plugins Add New. 2. Activate the plugin. 3. Visit **Forge AI Bot Log** in the admin menu. 4. (Optional, for cached sites) Copy `mu-plugin/forge-ai-bot-log-mu.php` into `/wp- content/mu-plugins/` for earlier capture, or use Settings Import from server access log. ## FAQ ### Does this slow down my site? No. It logs only matched AI bots, on an early hook, and reverse-DNS verification is throttled and cached. ### Will it catch bots if I use a caching plugin or CDN? Full-page caches can serve bots without running PHP. Use the included must-use early logger and/or the access-log importer to capture those hits. ### Does blocking a bot really stop it? robots.txt is advisory. Well-behaved bots obey it; some (e.g. Bytespider) are reported to ignore it. The plugin also generates an .htaccess hard-block snippet for those. ## Reviews There are no reviews for this plugin. ## Contributors & Developers “Forge AI Bot Log – AI Crawler Detection, Verification & Blocking” is open source software. The following people have contributed to this plugin. Contributors * [ forgecreative ](https://profiles.wordpress.org/forgeonline/) [Translate “Forge AI Bot Log – AI Crawler Detection, Verification & Blocking” into your language.](https://translate.wordpress.org/projects/wp-plugins/forge-ai-bot-log) ### Interested in development? [Browse the code](https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/forge-ai-bot-log/), check out the [SVN repository](https://plugins.svn.wordpress.org/forge-ai-bot-log/), or subscribe to the [development log](https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/log/forge-ai-bot-log/) by [RSS](https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/log/forge-ai-bot-log/?limit=100&mode=stop_on_copy&format=rss). ## Changelog #### 1.2.2 * Fixed: genuine bots visiting over IPv6 are no longer incorrectly marked “Spoofed” by DNS verification. #### 1.2.1 * Removed the remote bot-list auto-updater; the bundled bot list now updates via plugin releases. #### 1.2.0 * Added an External services disclosure for the optional promo feed. * Added a Settings shortcut to the Plugins screen. * New-bot alert emails are now sent on a background schedule instead of during the visit. #### 1.1.1 * Fixed: the .htaccess hard-block snippet now only lists bots you’ve actually blocked that ignore robots.txt, so it can’t accidentally suggest blocking an allowed retrieval bot. #### 1.1.0 * Added cross-promotion: advertise your other plugins in the monthly summary and new-bot alert emails, with optional remote feed and automatic UTM tracking. #### 1.0.0 * Initial release. ## Meta * Version **1.2.2** * Last updated **19 hours ago** * Active installations **Fewer than 10** * WordPress version ** 5.8 or higher ** * Tested up to **7.0.2** * PHP version ** 7.4 or higher ** * Tags * [AI](https://wordpress.org/plugins/tags/ai/)[analytics](https://wordpress.org/plugins/tags/analytics/) [bots](https://wordpress.org/plugins/tags/bots/)[crawler](https://wordpress.org/plugins/tags/crawler/) [robots.txt](https://wordpress.org/plugins/tags/robots-txt/) * [Advanced View](https://wordpress.org/plugins/forge-ai-bot-log/advanced/) ## Ratings No reviews have been submitted yet. [Your review](https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/forge-ai-bot-log/reviews/#new-post) [See all reviews](https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/forge-ai-bot-log/reviews/) ## Contributors * [ forgecreative ](https://profiles.wordpress.org/forgeonline/) ## Support Got something to say? Need help? [View support forum](https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/forge-ai-bot-log/)