AI Search for WooCommerce – Intelligent Product Search vs VigIA – AI Visibility, Analytics & Control

AI Search for WooCommerce makes your store’s search actually work. When a shopper types “summer blue dress” they find your “light cotton navy sundress”. When they search “headphones for running” they find your sweat-resistant wireless earbuds — even if the word “running” isn’t anywhere in the product description. Default WooCommerce search matches keywords. AI Search matches meaning. It reads your entire product catalog — titles, descriptions, SKUs, categories, tags, and attributes — and converts each product into a vector that captures what it actually is. When a shopper searches, the plugin finds the closest matches by meaning, not by exact word overlap. The result: fewer empty search pages, more products surfaced for long-tail queries, and shoppers who find what they wanted on the first try. Try it live before installing: wp-search.ai/demos runs this exact plugin on a sample store. Type your own search – or a SKU – and see the traditional results next to the AI results, side by side. Also works with blog posts, pages, and any custom post type — so you can use the same intelligent search across your whole site. Traditional Results First, AI Results After AI Search never replaces the results your search already finds — it adds to them. Every search runs in three steps, in this order: Exact matches — a query that matches a product SKU or an exact product title is always the first result. Traditional keyword results — everything WordPress and WooCommerce search would normally find (products literally containing your search words) comes next, ranked by keyword relevance instead of publish date. AI results — only below those, semantic matches are added: products that mean the same thing even when they use different words. So if a shopper searches for something that literally exists in your store, they see exactly what they would see without the plugin — just better ordered. The AI layer only ever extends the results with products the traditional search missed. Installing AI Search will not change or hide the results your customers already find today. Key Features WooCommerce Product Search: Full product catalog indexing — titles, short and long descriptions, SKUs, categories, tags, and product attributes (size, color, material, etc.). Pre-configured defaults so you can go live in minutes. Understands Shoppers, Not Just Keywords: Semantic search means “cozy winter sweater” matches your “merino wool pullover”. Long-tail and descriptive queries stop returning empty pages. Traditional Results Are Never Lost: Keyword matches always rank above AI suggestions — the AI extends your search results, it never replaces them. Cross-Lingual & Multilingual: Works with 100+ languages — Portuguese, Spanish, French, German, Greek, Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, and more. International stores get consistent search quality across every language, and an English query can still match content in other languages. SKU & Attribute Matching: Customers can search by SKU fragments, attribute values, or technical specs and still find the right product. Smart Fallback System: 4-tier fallback ensures shoppers never hit a zero-result page — if AI search finds nothing, standard WordPress search takes over automatically. No OpenAI Account Required: Uses our free embedding service (up to 10,000 embeddings per site). Works out of the box for most stores. Bring Your Own API Key: Optionally use your own OpenAI API key for unlimited indexing. Bulk Embedding Generation: Index your entire existing catalog in one click, filtered by post type or category. Quota Management: Real-time monitoring of AI service usage and limits (v1.14.0+). Works Beyond Products Too: Same intelligent search for blog posts, pages, and any public custom post type. ACF Compatible: Index Advanced Custom Fields data for deeper product metadata search. Tunable Similarity Threshold: Fine-tune how strict or broad search results are, per store. Intelligent Caching: Fast results with automatic local caching. Perfect For WooCommerce stores with large or varied product catalogs Fashion & apparel stores where shoppers describe products in their own words (“something flowy for summer”) Electronics & home goods stores with complex technical specs and model numbers Books, media, and marketplaces with thousands of titles International stores selling in multiple languages Membership sites, knowledge bases, and directories — any content-heavy WordPress site How It Works Each product in your WooCommerce catalog is converted into a numeric “meaning fingerprint” (called an embedding) that captures its title, description, SKU, categories, tags, and attributes. When a shopper searches, the plugin first pins exact SKU/title matches, then lists every traditional keyword match (what your search finds today), ranked by relevance. The query then gets its own meaning fingerprint, which is compared against every product’s fingerprint. The closest semantic matches are appended below the traditional results — extra products the keyword search missed, never replacements for it. If nothing at all is found, a multi-tier fallback kicks in so shoppers never hit an empty results page. Embeddings are generated automatically when you publish or update products — no manual work after setup. Learn More Visit our website for documentation, demos, and examples: https://wp-search.ai/ Browse technical documentation, see live demos of the plugin in action, and learn best practices for AI-powered search. Usage Your existing WooCommerce search form (and the default WordPress search) are automatically upgraded — no theme or template changes required. Manage settings, switch providers, and monitor quota via the AI Search menu in your WordPress admin. External Service This plugin connects with: OpenAI Embeddings API: https://platform.openai.com/docs/guides/embeddings Custom Node.js Embedding Service Please read more here: https://platform.openai.com/docs/guides/embeddings

VigIA (Spanish for “lookout” or “watchman”, incorporating “IA” – Spanish for “AI”) is a complete AI visibility toolkit for WordPress. Monitor 60+ AI crawlers, control access to your content, and optimize how AI systems discover and understand your site. What does VigIA do? Scores your AI visibility with a 100-point analyzer covering 20 checks across 5 categories Tracks AI crawlers visiting your site (GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot, and 60+ others) Provides detailed analytics with advanced filters, server-side pagination, and exportable reports with metadata banner Blocks unwanted crawlers via PHP (403 response) Manages robots.txt rules for AI crawlers with compliance monitoring Sends email alerts about crawler activity (daily, weekly, or monthly) Generates llms.txt files to help AI systems understand your site Serves markdown endpoints for posts, pages, taxonomy archives (categories, tags, WooCommerce product categories, custom taxonomies) and WooCommerce products with schema-like data Generates JSON-LD structured data with Site Identity and AI Discovery signals Exposes abilities for AI agents and automation tools (WordPress 6.9+) Key Features AI Visibility Analyzer * 100-point scoring system with letter grades (A+ to F) * 20 individual checks across 5 categories * Access & AI Discovery (37 pts): robots.txt, AI bot directives, Content Signals, llms.txt, sitemap, RSS feed * Structured Data & Semantic Context (25 pts): JSON-LD schemas, Open Graph, Twitter Cards, meta description, canonical URL * Content Structure & Readability (20 pts): heading hierarchy, semantic HTML5, image alt text, content/HTML ratio * AI Interaction & Distribution (8 pts): markdown delivery, AI share buttons * Access Performance (10 pts): TTFB measurement * Smart recommendations with direct links to VigIA features and plugin suggestions * Analyze any page on your site with URL autocomplete selector * Results cached for 24 hours with manual re-analyze option Analytics Dashboard * Total visits, unique crawlers, and pages crawled statistics * Timeline chart with daily breakdown * Category distribution (AI Training, AI Search, AI Assistant, Data Scraper) * Top crawlers and most crawled pages tables with paginated navigation * Share Buttons & AI-powered Summaries integration: see share button clicks per page * Recent activity log with content type and HTTP status columns (color coded by status family) * Advanced filters: multi-select crawler picker, content type, HTTP status code, and configurable date range * Server-side pagination with four-button pager (first, previous, next, last) — operates over the full database, not just the latest 500 rows * Period comparison functionality * CSV export with a metadata banner (site name, site URL, export type, date range, export timestamp, applied filters) * “Export filtered CSV” button that downloads exactly what the active filters return, with vigia-filtered-YYYY-MM-DD.csv filename * Content type detection distinguishes Home, Post, Page, Product, custom CPTs, Category archive, Tag archive, Date/Author archive, Feed, Sitemap, REST API, File, Admin / login attempts (/wp-admin, /wp-login.php), WordPress system (admin-ajax, xmlrpc, wp-cron, wp-comments-post), 404 Not found, and Other Crawler Blocking * Block crawlers via PHP with 403 Forbidden response * Quick block dropdown in analytics dashboard * Manage blocks from Extras page * Works on any server (Apache, Nginx, LiteSpeed, etc.) Robots.txt Management * Add Disallow rules for AI crawlers * Visual preview of your robots.txt * Compliance monitoring: see which crawlers ignore your rules * One-click blocking for non-compliant crawlers * Works with both physical and virtual robots.txt Email Alerts * Daily, weekly, or monthly reports * Three detail levels: Minimal, Normal, Complete * Non-compliant crawler warnings * Activity comparison with previous period Markdown for Agents * Serve posts, pages and any public post type as optimized markdown for AI agents * Serve taxonomy archive pages (categories, tags, WooCommerce product categories, custom taxonomies) as markdown — disabled by default, opt in per taxonomy * Dedicated .md URL endpoints (e.g., /your-post.md, /category/news.md, /product-category/electronics.md) * Accept: text/markdown content negotiation on posts and taxonomy archive pages * Discoverability via Link HTTP headers and HTML tags * YAML frontmatter for posts: title, date, modified, author, image, categories, tags, post type, lang * YAML frontmatter for taxonomy terms: title, description, url, type, taxonomy, parent, count, image (term meta), lang * WooCommerce product frontmatter adds schema-like fields: sku, product_type, price, regular_price, sale_price, currency, availability, stock_quantity, rating, rating_count, review_count * Taxonomy term body includes the term description (rendered through the_content), the list of direct child terms in hierarchical taxonomies, and an excerpt of the latest posts/products assigned to the term * Product listings inside product_cat archives include an inline summary with formatted price, “was X” on sale items, star rating and out-of-stock flag * Respects blocking rules (blocked crawlers get 403) and LLMs.txt exclusion filters * Per-term noindex detection from Yoast SEO, Rank Math, All in One SEO and SEOPress * Analytics integration: tracks markdown requests per crawler * X-Markdown-Tokens response header * Filters: vigia_markdown_post_eligible, vigia_markdown_term_eligible, vigia_markdown_term_posts_limit * Follows the Cloudflare Markdown for Agents standard LLMs.txt Generator * Select content by post type with one click * Filter by taxonomies (categories, tags, custom) * Manual include/exclude with AJAX search * Exclude by URL patterns (wildcards supported) * SEO plugin integration (auto-exclude noindex content) * Auto-regeneration (daily, weekly, monthly) * Robots.txt integration (add llms.txt and llms-full.txt references) * Generate llms.txt and llms-full.txt files * Full content or excerpt mode * Compatible with Yoast SEO, Rank Math, All in One SEO, SEOPress, The SEO Framework, and Native SEO NoIndexer JSON-LD Structured Data * Generate WebSite and Organization/Person schema for site identity * AI Discovery: ReadAction pointers to llms.txt, llms-full.txt, and Markdown for Agents endpoints * Social profiles and sameAs links for brand identity across the web * SearchAction for Google sitelinks search box * Media library integration for logo selection * SEO plugin conflict detection (Yoast, Rank Math, AIOSEO, SEOPress, The SEO Framework) * Choose output page (front page or any published page) * Live JSON-LD preview with real-time updates * Smart integration with LLMs.txt and Markdown for Agents features Supported AI Crawlers VigIA monitors 60+ AI crawlers including: OpenAI: GPTBot, OAI-SearchBot, OAI-AdsBot, ChatGPT-User Anthropic: ClaudeBot, Claude-SearchBot, Claude-User, Claude-Code Google: Google-Extended, GoogleOther, Gemini-Deep-Research, Google-NotebookLM Perplexity: PerplexityBot, Perplexity-User Meta: Meta-ExternalAgent, FacebookBot, Meta-WebIndexer Amazon: Amazonbot, Amzn-SearchBot, bedrockbot Mistral: MistralAI-User, MistralAI-Index Microsoft: BingBot ByteDance: Bytespider Apple: Applebot-Extended And many more… Privacy Focused VigIA stores visitor data locally in your WordPress database. No data is sent to external servers. Abilities API VigIA is one of the first WordPress plugins to implement the Abilities API introduced in WordPress 6.9. This API allows AI agents, automation tools, and external systems to discover and interact with VigIA’s functionality in a standardized, secure way. What are Abilities? Abilities are self-contained units of functionality that VigIA exposes through WordPress’s central registry. Each ability has defined inputs, outputs, and permissions, making it easy for automation tools to understand and use them. Available Abilities VigIA registers the following abilities: Analytics vigia/get-crawler-stats – Get statistics about AI crawler visits (total visits, unique crawlers, pages crawled) vigia/get-top-crawlers – Get a ranked list of most active AI crawlers vigia/get-top-pages – Get the most crawled pages on your site Blocking vigia/get-blocked-items – List all blocked crawlers and IP addresses vigia/block-crawler – Block a crawler by User-Agent pattern vigia/unblock-crawler – Remove an existing block Robots.txt vigia/get-robots-rules – Get current AI crawler rules in robots.txt vigia/add-robots-disallow – Add a Disallow directive for a crawler vigia/remove-robots-rule – Remove a robots.txt rule Use Cases Automated monitoring: AI agents can query crawler statistics and alert you to anomalies Reactive blocking: Automation tools can block crawlers that repeatedly ignore robots.txt External dashboards: Aggregate data from multiple WordPress sites with VigIA installed WP-CLI integration: Future command-line access through the Abilities API n8n / Make workflows: Build custom automation flows using VigIA’s abilities Requirements The Abilities API ships with WordPress 6.9 and later. On older WordPress versions, VigIA works normally but abilities and MCP are not available. MCP Server (Model Context Protocol) VigIA exposes its 9 abilities as native MCP tools to any MCP-compatible client (Claude Code, Cursor, Claude Desktop, Codex CLI, Antigravity, Continue, Cline, Zed and similar) using the official WordPress MCP Adapter. The adapter ships bundled with the plugin, so the MCP endpoint is active right after installation — no Composer step or terminal access required. Requirements WordPress 6.9 or later (provides the Abilities API) Quick connect (recommended) Open VigIA > Extras > MCP and click “Generate password and connection commands”. The plugin creates a dedicated Application Password named VigIA MCP and renders ready-to-paste commands for Claude Code, Cursor, Claude Desktop and a generic block (URL + Authorization header) for any other MCP client. The plain password is shown only once. If you lose it, revoke the entry from the same panel and generate a new one. Endpoint https://your-site.example/wp-json/vigia/v1/mcp The endpoint uses HTTP Basic auth with the WordPress Application Password. The user must have the manage_options capability. Connecting Claude Code Quick Connect builds the full command for you. The shape is: claude mcp add --transport http vigia https://your-site.example/wp-json/vigia/v1/mcp --header "Authorization: Basic BASE64_OF_USER_AND_APP_PASSWORD" Claude Code merges the new entry into its config file automatically — no risk of breaking other servers. Connecting Cursor Save the JSON block from Quick Connect as ~/.cursor/mcp.json. You can also reach this file from inside Cursor at Settings → Cursor Settings → MCP. If the file already exists with other content, see the FAQ. Claude Desktop and other clients Claude Desktop does not speak HTTP MCP, so it needs a small bridge and a config file of its own. Any other client (Codex CLI, Continue, Cline, Antigravity, Zed, or your own) takes the two raw values Quick Connect exposes: the server URL and the Authorization header. Both cases are covered in the FAQ, together with how to merge VigIA into a config file that already exists without losing what is in it. Read-only mode If you only want your AI to consult VigIA (not change anything), enable “Read-only mode” in the MCP tab. While on, write actions (block, unblock, robots changes) return a permission denied error. Read actions (statistics, top crawlers, blocked items, robots rules) keep working. The toggle stores a vigia_mcp_read_only option that hooks into the vigia_can_write_via_abilities filter. Developers can still force read-only from a mu-plugin: add_filter( 'vigia_can_write_via_abilities', '__return_false' ); The mu-plugin filter at the default priority takes precedence over the toggle. Who can reach the endpoint The endpoint requires the capability to manage options, the same one every tool behind it already asked for. The vigia_mcp_transport_capability filter can lower that bar; each tool keeps its own permission check. After connecting Restart your MCP client after adding the server so it picks up the new tools. Then try a few prompts to confirm everything is wired up: “Show me VigIA crawler stats for the last 7 days.” “List the top 5 most crawled pages on this site.” “Add a robots.txt Disallow rule for TestBot and then list the current AI crawler rules.” The third example exercises a read + write + read round-trip, which is the most complete sanity check. Support Need private support or custom development? Do you need one-on-one help, priority troubleshooting, or a custom feature, integration, or tweak built specifically for your site? I offer private support and custom development. Just contact me and tell me what you need. Need help or have suggestions? Official website WordPress support forum YouTube channel Documentation and tutorials Love the plugin? Please leave us a 5-star review and help spread the word! About AyudaWP We are specialists in WordPress security, SEO, AI and performance optimization plugins. We create tools that solve real problems for WordPress site owners while maintaining the highest coding standards and accessibility requirements.