Title: Zen GEO – Generative Engine Optimization
Author: Guram Zhgamadze
Published: August 10, 2026
Last modified: August 10, 2026
---
Search plugins
# Zen GEO – Generative Engine Optimization
By [Guram Zhgamadze](https://profiles.wordpress.org/guramzhgamadze/)
[Download](https://downloads.wordpress.org/plugin/zen-geo.1.5.0.zip)
* [Details](https://wordpress.org/plugins/zen-geo/#description)
* [Reviews](https://wordpress.org/plugins/zen-geo/#reviews)
* [Installation](https://wordpress.org/plugins/zen-geo/#installation)
* [Development](https://wordpress.org/plugins/zen-geo/#developers)
[Support](https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/zen-geo/)
## Description
Search used to send people to your page. Increasingly, an assistant reads your page
and answers on your behalf — and only sometimes cites you. Generative Engine Optimization
is the work of making sure that when an assistant answers a question in your field,
it can find your content, understand it, quote it accurately, and name you as the
source.
Zen GEO does that work in WordPress. It is not an SEO plugin and does not replace
one — it sits alongside Yoast, Rank Math or nothing at all, and stands down automatically
where it would conflict.
#### What this does that an llms.txt generator does not
Publishing an llms.txt file is a few lines of code, and plenty of plugins stop there.
Zen GEO
treats that as one output of the job rather than the job:
* **It scores your content and tells you what to change.** Twelve weighted checks
model how
retrieval-augmented systems actually behave — they chunk a page, embed
the chunks, retrieve a few, and quote whichever one answers the question on its
own. Every failing check names a specific fix.
* **It reads page builders.** Content is extracted from Elementor’s stored element
tree, so pages
built with Elementor, its Pro widgets, or third-party widgets
are scored on their real text instead of an empty `post_content` — which is where
most content analysers give up. Zen GEO also adds its own tab to the Elementor
editor panel.
* **It shows which assistant read which page.** Not just that AI crawlers visited:
a per-page,
per-crawler breakdown, stored locally with no IP addresses and 90
days of history.
* **It finds the FAQ you already built.** Question-and-answer pairs are read out
of Elementor
accordions, toggles and Details blocks and published as FAQPage
data, with nothing retyped.
* **It defers instead of competing.** Yoast, Rank Math, AIOSEO, SEOPress and Slim
SEO are detected
and Zen GEO stands down where they already emit structured
data.
#### Write content engines can actually quote
* **Key takeaways** — a short bulleted summary at the top of a page. Each bullet
is a complete claim, positioned where a retrieval system chunks first.
* **Questions & answers** — published as visible text _and_ as FAQPage data. Nothing
hidden behind JavaScript, because text an engine cannot see is text it will not
quote.
* **GEO analyzer** — scores every page 0–100 across twelve weighted checks that
model how retrieval actually works: a direct answer up front, question-shaped
headings, lists and tables, concrete figures, outbound citations, structured
Q&A, depth, freshness, a named author, a hand-written summary, and a specific
title. Every failing check comes with a specific instruction, not a colour.
* **Site-wide audit** with CSV export, and **WP-CLI** commands for bulk work.
#### Prove it is working
* **AI crawler analytics**, stored locally: which assistants visited, how often,
and exactly which pages each one read. No IP addresses, no visitor data, nothing
sent anywhere.
* A 30-day activity chart, per-crawler totals, the most-requested paths, and a
day-by-day history kept for 90 days with CSV export.
* An optional **weekly email summary** to the site administrator.
#### Publish a machine-readable map of your site
* **llms.txt** — a Markdown index of your site at `/llms.txt`, following the llmstxt.
org convention: your site name, a summary, and annotated links to the pages that
matter.
* **llms-full.txt** — optionally, the same pages with their full text inlined,
for assistants that fetch one document instead of crawling.
* **Markdown pages** — every page also available as clean Markdown at `?zengeo=
md`. No theme, no navigation, no cookie banner: just headings, prose, lists,
tables and links. Advertised in each page’s `` so crawlers discover it
on their own.
#### Decide who may read your site
* Per-crawler allow or disallow for **GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot, Google-
Extended, Applebot-Extended, CCBot, Bytespider, meta-externalagent, Amazonbot,
AI2Bot, Diffbot, YouBot, DuckAssistBot, MistralAI-User, cohere-ai** and the user-
triggered fetchers.
* Crawlers are **grouped by what they actually do** — model training, answer-engine
indexing, or a fetch triggered by a real person — because blocking the second
kind removes you from AI answers entirely, and most people who say “block AI”
do not mean that.
* **Enforced blocking**: robots.txt is a request. Optionally answer 403 instead,
at the PHP layer.
* Custom robots.txt directives, validated on save.
#### Structured data that supports attribution
* One consolidated JSON-LD graph — Organization or Person, WebSite, Article/WebPage,
BreadcrumbList — with every node cross-referenced so an engine reads one coherent
statement rather than a pile of fragments.
* **sameAs profile links**, which is how an engine confirms the name on your site
is the same entity it has seen elsewhere.
* **FAQPage** from your Q&A pairs, **speakable** from your key takeaways, **LocalBusiness**
with address and opening hours, and **Product** for WooCommerce.
* Detects Yoast SEO, Rank Math, All in One SEO, SEOPress and Slim SEO, and stays
out of their way by default.
#### Privacy
Zen GEO makes no external network requests of any kind. It does not phone home,
has no license server, collects no telemetry, and loads no remote assets. Crawler
analytics are stored in your own database and never leave it.
## Screenshots
[⌊The dashboard: what is published, site-wide content readiness, and 30 days of
AI crawler activity.⌉⌊The dashboard: what is published, site-wide content readiness,
and 30 days of AI crawler activity.⌉[
The dashboard: what is published, site-wide content readiness, and 30 days of AI
crawler activity.
[⌊AI crawler settings, grouped by what each crawler is actually for.⌉⌊AI crawler
settings, grouped by what each crawler is actually for.⌉[
AI crawler settings, grouped by what each crawler is actually for.
[⌊The GEO analyzer in the editor, with a score and a specific instruction for every
failing check.⌉⌊The GEO analyzer in the editor, with a score and a specific instruction
for every failing check.⌉[
The GEO analyzer in the editor, with a score and a specific instruction for every
failing check.
[⌊The site-wide content audit, weakest pages first, with CSV export.⌉⌊The site-wide
content audit, weakest pages first, with CSV export.⌉[
The site-wide content audit, weakest pages first, with CSV export.
[⌊The generated llms.txt.⌉⌊The generated llms.txt.⌉[
The generated llms.txt.
## Installation
1. Upload the plugin to `/wp-content/plugins/zen-geo/`, or install it through Plugins
Add New.
2. Activate it through the Plugins screen.
3. Go to **Zen GEO** to review what is published and choose your crawler policy.
## FAQ
### Do I still need an SEO plugin?
Yes, if you want one. Zen GEO does not manage titles, meta descriptions, canonicals,
redirects or XML sitemaps. It handles the AI-visibility layer that SEO plugins largely
do not, and defers to your SEO plugin’s structured data automatically.
### Will blocking AI crawlers protect my content?
Partly, and it is worth being clear about the limits. robots.txt is honoured by
the major AI companies but ignored by scrapers that do not want to be told. Enforced
blocking raises that to a 403, matched on the user agent — which stops crawlers
that identify themselves honestly, and not an impersonator using a browser user
agent string. Anything published on a public URL can be copied by someone determined
to copy it.
### Does blocking training crawlers remove me from ChatGPT or Claude?
No — those are different crawlers, which is why Zen GEO separates them. Blocking
a training crawler affects future model weights. Blocking an answer-engine crawler
is what removes you from today’s answers and citations.
### My crawler analytics show nothing. Is it broken?
Most likely not. New sites take days or weeks to be discovered. Also, requests counted
here are ones that reach PHP: a full-page cache or CDN serving bots directly will
under-report. Treat the numbers as a trend.
### Does it work with Elementor?
Yes, in two ways. Zen GEO adds its own tab to the Elementor editor panel — beside
Widgets, Components and Globals — so the score, the fixes and the Q&A fields are
available while you build. And the analyzer reads Elementor’s stored element tree,
so Elementor-built pages are scored on their actual headings and text rather than
on an empty `post_content`, which is where most content analysers give up.
The tab uses Elementor’s own panel API and appears on Elementor 4.0 and later. On
older versions the tab is simply absent and the WordPress meta box remains the full-
featured fallback — nothing breaks.
### Does it work with WooCommerce?
Yes. Product schema is emitted for products when WooCommerce is not already emitting
its own, and products can be included in llms.txt and the analyzer like any other
post type.
## Reviews
There are no reviews for this plugin.
## Contributors & Developers
“Zen GEO – Generative Engine Optimization” is open source software. The following
people have contributed to this plugin.
Contributors
* [ Guram Zhgamadze ](https://profiles.wordpress.org/guramzhgamadze/)
[Translate “Zen GEO – Generative Engine Optimization” into your language.](https://translate.wordpress.org/projects/wp-plugins/zen-geo)
### Interested in development?
[Browse the code](https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/zen-geo/), check out
the [SVN repository](https://plugins.svn.wordpress.org/zen-geo/), or subscribe to
the [development log](https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/log/zen-geo/) by [RSS](https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/log/zen-geo/?limit=100&mode=stop_on_copy&format=rss).
## Changelog
#### 1.5.0
Crawler analytics release: it now records **which AI assistant read which page**,
keeps three
months of history, and no longer mangles non-Latin URLs.
**Per-crawler page attribution**
* Page requests record the crawler that made them. The “Most requested pages” table
gains a
**Read by** column, so you can see that ClaudeBot read one page and
Perplexity another — the half that tells you what each assistant has actually
ingested, rather than just that it visited.
* Crawlers are ranked within each page, pages ranked by total, and 15 rows are
shown.
* New **Export pages (CSV)** — one row per page per crawler, covering everything
stored rather
than only the rows on screen.
**Longer, deeper history**
* History is kept for **90 days** instead of 30. A day costs one small integer
per crawler, so
three months is a few kilobytes — enough to see whether AI crawler
interest is growing or fading.
* The activity chart spans **30 days** rather than 14.
* New collapsible **day-by-day history**: every recorded day with its per-crawler
breakdown.
* New **Export daily history (CSV)** — one row per day per crawler, so a copy outlives
the
retention window.
* The card states how far the history goes back and how long it is kept.
**Fixes**
* **Non-Latin URLs were destroyed.** `sanitize_text_field()` strips percent-encoded
sequences, so
a path of percent-encoded Georgian, Greek, Cyrillic, Arabic, Hebrew
or CJK slugs was reduced to its punctuation — hundreds of distinct pages collapsing
into meaningless rows like `/glossary//` and `/glossary/-/`. Paths are now decoded
before sanitizing, so every page counts separately and reads properly (`/glossary/
აბჰაია/`).
* **The page list could never accept a new page once full.** A new path was stored
with a count of
one, sorted to the bottom, and dropped by the very request that
added it — so the list froze on whichever pages happened to fill it first and
never changed again. Many more pages are now kept than are displayed, and the
page seen in the current request is always retained so it can start accumulating.
* **Empty state explained rather than hidden.** The “Most requested pages” heading
stays visible
with a line saying pages appear on the next crawl, instead of
the whole section silently vanishing and looking broken.
* Page rows recorded before this release are cleared. They were either corrupted
by the encoding
bug or carried no crawler, so they could not answer “which assistant
read this page?” and would have sat permanently at the top of the report. **Per-
crawler totals, per-day history and the grand total are kept — the real history
was never in those rows.
Scores, llms.txt, Markdown pages, structured data and crawler blocking were unaffected
throughout;
every issue above was confined to the analytics display.
#### 1.4.0
* **Reads content from every Elementor widget, including ones it has never seen.**
The 1.3.0 accordion fix turned out to be one instance of a much wider problem:
content was only read from a fixed list of control names, so anything using its
own naming was invisible to the analyzer. Auditing Elementor free and Pro found
49 further text controls that were being skipped — Testimonial, Alert, Flip Box,
Price Table, Blockquote, Call to Action, Animated Headline, Slides, Author Box,
Image captions, Progress bars and more.
* Extraction is now generic: known names are used for their meaning (heading vs
rich text) and everything else is kept when it reads like prose. Third-party
and custom widgets are covered automatically, with no allowlist to maintain.
* Technical settings are still excluded — CSS ids and classes, URLs, colours, sizes,
layout enums, aria labels and shortcode strings never reach the score.
* Affected sites will see scores rise, because pages built with these widgets were
previously being measured as near-empty.
#### 1.3.0
* Reads questions and answers straight out of **accordions, toggles and Details
blocks**. Most FAQs are built in the page builder rather than typed into a plugin—
those pairs now count towards the GEO score and publish as FAQPage structured
data with nothing to retype. Covers Elementor Accordion, Toggle, Tabs and Nested
Accordion, and the block editor’s Details block.
* Only headings that actually read as questions are treated as Q&A, so an accordion
of plain section names (“Shipping”, “Returns”) is left alone rather than published
as a false FAQ.
* Skips any Elementor Nested Accordion that already has its own FAQ schema switched
on, so one page never carries two competing FAQPage graphs.
* Fixed: accordion, toggle and tab content was previously invisible to the analyzer
entirely — a page whose whole body was an FAQ accordion scored as having almost
no content.
#### 1.2.0
* Zen GEO now appears as a tab inside the Elementor editor, beside Widgets, Components
and Globals — the score, the fixes, the key takeaways, the Q&A pairs and the
visibility switch, without leaving the builder.
* Built on Elementor’s own `injectTab()` panel API rather than by string-replacing
Elementor’s rendered markup, so it does not break when Elementor changes a class
name.
* New REST endpoint (`zen-geo/v1/post/`) backing the panel, gated per post
on `edit_post`.
* New WordPress Dashboard widget: average GEO score, what is published, AI crawler
activity over the last 7 days, and the three weakest pages.
* Fixed: the score circle on the Zen GEO dashboard lost its styling in 1.1.0 and
rendered as plain text.
* Fixed: dismissing the “Zen GEO is active” notice with the ✕ did not stick, so
it reappeared on every admin page load for a week. It now saves the dismissal,
and clears itself automatically once you have opened a Zen GEO screen.
#### 1.1.0
* Automatic background scoring: existing pages and posts are scored on an hourly
batch after activation, so the audit and the site average are meaningful without
re-saving anything. Scores also refresh themselves as they age.
* Per-page control: every page and post can be included in or excluded from Zen
GEO from the editor. An excluded page is left out of llms.txt, serves no Markdown
version, gets no page-level structured data, and is dropped from the audit and
the site average.
* Redesigned editor panel: a single headline verdict, a score ring, a to-fix /
to-improve / good tally, the specific fixes first and the passing checks folded
away.
* Post-list GEO column now shows excluded pages distinctly from pages not yet scored.
#### 1.0.0
* Initial release.
* llms.txt and llms-full.txt, served dynamically and cached.
* Markdown representation of every indexed page at `?zengeo=md`, advertised via
rel=”alternate”.
* Per-crawler robots.txt policy for 19 AI crawlers, grouped by purpose, plus optional
enforced 403 blocking and custom robots.txt directives.
* Local, IP-free AI crawler analytics with a 14-day chart, per-crawler totals and
top paths.
* Consolidated JSON-LD graph: Organization/Person, WebSite, Article/WebPage, BreadcrumbList,
FAQPage, speakable, LocalBusiness and WooCommerce Product, with automatic stand-
down when an SEO plugin is active.
* Key takeaways and Q&A editors, published as visible text and structured data.
* GEO analyzer with twelve weighted checks, Elementor-aware content extraction,
a sortable post-list column, a site-wide audit and CSV export.
* WP-CLI commands: `audit`, `score`, `llms`, `crawlers`.
* Optional weekly email report, Site Health integration, and settings import/export.
## Meta
* Version **1.5.0**
* Last updated **4 hours ago**
* Active installations **Fewer than 10**
* WordPress version ** 6.5 or higher **
* Tested up to **7.0.3**
* PHP version ** 8.0 or higher **
* Tags
* [AI](https://wordpress.org/plugins/tags/ai/)[analytics](https://wordpress.org/plugins/tags/analytics/)
[llms.txt](https://wordpress.org/plugins/tags/llms-txt/)[schema](https://wordpress.org/plugins/tags/schema/)
[seo](https://wordpress.org/plugins/tags/seo/)
* [Advanced View](https://wordpress.org/plugins/zen-geo/advanced/)
## Ratings
No reviews have been submitted yet.
[Your review](https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/zen-geo/reviews/#new-post)
[See all reviews](https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/zen-geo/reviews/)
## Contributors
* [ Guram Zhgamadze ](https://profiles.wordpress.org/guramzhgamadze/)
## Support
Got something to say? Need help?
[View support forum](https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/zen-geo/)