Better Robots.txt – AI-Ready Crawl Control & Bot Governance vs RankReady – AI & LLM SEO for ChatGPT, Perplexity & Google AI

Better Robots.txt replaces the default WordPress robots.txt workflow with a smarter, structured version you can configure and preview before publishing. Instead of a blank textarea, you get a guided wizard with presets, plain-language explanations, and a final Review & Save step so you can inspect the generated robots.txt before it goes live. Built for beginners and advanced users alike, Better Robots.txt helps you control how search engines, AI crawlers, SEO tools, archive bots, bad bots, social preview bots, and other automated agents interact with your site. Trusted by thousands of WordPress sites, Better Robots.txt is designed for the AI era without resorting to hype, vague promises, or hidden rules. Better Robots.txt is available in Free, Pro, and Premium editions. The free plugin covers the guided workflow and essential crawl control features, while Pro and Premium unlock additional governance, protection, and AI-ready modules. Some screenshots on the plugin page show features from all three editions. A quick overview Why Better Robots.txt is different Most robots.txt plugins fall into one of three categories: Simple text editor Virtual robots.txt manager Single-purpose AI or policy add-on Better Robots.txt goes further. It gives you a complete, guided crawl control workflow so you can: Choose a preset that matches your goals Control major crawler categories without writing everything by hand Keep core WordPress protection rules visible and editable Clean up low-value crawl paths that waste crawl budget Generate a cleaner robots.txt output Preview the final result before saving What you can control Better Robots.txt helps you manage: Search engine visibility AI and LLM crawler behavior AI usage signals such as search, ai-input, and ai-train preferences SEO tool crawlers Bad bots and abusive crawlers Archive and Wayback access Feed crawlers and crawl traps WooCommerce crawl cleanup CSS, JavaScript, and image crawling rules Social media preview crawlers ads.txt and app-ads.txt allowance llms.txt generation Advanced directives such as crawl-delay and custom rules Final review before publishing Editions Better Robots.txt is available in three editions: Free – Includes the guided setup, the Essential preset, core crawl control features, and the final Review & Save workflow. Pro – Adds more advanced governance and protection modules, including additional AI, crawler, and cleanup controls. Premium – Unlocks the most restrictive and advanced protection options, including the Fortress preset and additional high-control modules. Some options shown in the interface are marked Free, Pro, or Premium so users can immediately understand which modules belong to each edition. Presets Setup starts with four modes: Essential – A clean, practical configuration for most websites that want a better robots.txt without complexity. AI-First – For publishers and content sites that want AI-ready governance without shutting down discovery. Fortress – For websites that want stronger protection against scraping, archive capture, and unnecessary crawl activity. Custom – For users who prefer to configure each module manually. For many sites, one preset plus a quick review is enough. Built for beginners and experts Beginners get: A guided setup instead of a raw robots.txt box Preset-based configuration Plain-language explanations for important choices A safer workflow with a final preview step Advanced users get: Editable core WordPress protection rules Fine-grained crawler controls by category WooCommerce-oriented cleanup options Consolidated output options Advanced directives and custom rules A final output they can inspect before publishing AI-ready, without hype Better Robots.txt includes features for modern AI-related crawl governance, including: AI crawler handling Optional llms.txt support AI usage signals for compliant systems Optional machine-readable governance signals for advanced use cases These features help you express how you want automated systems to use your content. However, Better Robots.txt does not claim to control AI by force. Like robots.txt itself, these signals are most useful with compliant systems and good-faith crawlers. What Better Robots.txt is Better Robots.txt is: A robots.txt governance plugin for WordPress A guided configuration workflow instead of a raw text editor A crawl control layer to reduce wasteful crawling A practical bridge between SEO, crawl hygiene, and AI-era policy signaling A way to keep your crawl policy clearer for humans and machines Technical reference for advanced users: Better Robots.txt also maintains a public GitHub repository with product definition, governance notes, and machine-readable artefacts. What Better Robots.txt is not Better Robots.txt is not: A firewall or Web Application Firewall (WAF) An anti-scraping enforcement engine A legal compliance engine A guarantee that every bot will obey your rules A replacement for server-level security or access control It helps you publish a clearer crawl policy. It does not replace infrastructure-level protection. Typical use cases Use Better Robots.txt if you want to: Clean up a weak or noisy default robots.txt Reduce crawl waste on WordPress or WooCommerce Keep major search engines allowed while restricting other bots Control whether archive bots can snapshot your site Publish AI usage preferences more clearly Keep social preview bots allowed while limiting scrapers Review the final file before making it live Key Features Guided step-by-step wizard Preset-based setup: Essential, AI-First, Fortress, Custom Search engine visibility controls AI and LLM crawler governance AI usage signals support SEO tool crawler controls Bad bot and abusive crawler options Archive and Wayback access controls Spam, feed, and crawl trap cleanup WooCommerce crawl cleanup options CSS, JavaScript, and image crawling rules Social media preview crawler controls ads.txt and app-ads.txt allowance Optional llms.txt generation Consolidated output option Core WordPress protection rules remain visible and editable Final Review & Save preview screen About the publisher Better Robots.txt is developed and maintained by Pagup, a digital readability firm based in Quebec, Canada. Pagup helps organizations become correctly understood by search engines, generative AI systems, and autonomous agents. The robots.txt file is the first surface that AI crawlers read when they discover a site. A well-structured robots.txt that references governance files such as llms.txt, ai-manifest.json, and interpretation policies helps AI systems understand your site faster and more accurately. Better Robots.txt is one component of a broader digital readability practice that includes semantic content architecture, AI governance and machine readability, and interpretive SEO. Part of the Pagup ecosystem pagup.com — Digital readability firm. Diagnostic, semantic architecture, AI governance. gautierdorval.com — Doctrine, canonical definitions, interpretive governance research. interpretive-governance.org — Formal versioned standard for interpretive governance. better-robots.com — Documentation and resources for Better Robots.txt.

RankReady is a WordPress plugin built for the AI search layer — the answers ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Gemini, and Google AI Overviews show before anyone reaches a blue link. Drop it in alongside your existing SEO plugin (Rank Math, Yoast, AIOSEO — any of them) and start showing up in AI answers and citations. No conflicts. No replacement. Zero frontend bloat. Visit the official RankReady page → Traditional SEO plugins optimize for Google’s classic results. RankReady adds the layer above them: the AI SEO signals — Google’s Open Knowledge Format (OKF), llms.txt, FAQ schema, Markdown endpoints, AI crawler controls — that decide whether AI engines read and cite your content. This is generative engine optimization (GEO) and answer engine optimization (AEO) for WordPress, built to work with the SEO plugin you already use. A quick walkthrough of the whole plugin. Built by POSIMYTH Inc. — the team behind The Plus Addons for Elementor, NexterWP, and UiChemy. Coexists with your SEO plugin — zero frontend impact Install RankReady, optionally pick an LLM provider (OpenAI, Anthropic, Gemini, or DeepSeek) for the AI Summary and FAQ generators, and you’re set. It auto-detects your active SEO plugin and never emits duplicate schema — your existing Yoast or Rank Math setup keeps working exactly as before. All AI generation runs in the WordPress admin, so there are no API calls on page load, no third-party scripts, and no extra requests for your visitors. Core Web Vitals are unaffected. llms.txt — the AI-native sitemap RankReady serves the llmstxt.org standard at /llms.txt (a curated index of your best content) and /llms-full.txt (the full content concatenated as Markdown). AI crawlers read these files first to understand your site. Configurable post types, max post count, category and tag exclusions, and a per-domain brand identity (site name, summary, about section) you control from the AI Crawlers tab. Multilingual sites get hreflang Link headers when WPML, Polylang, TranslatePress, Weglot, or GTranslate is detected. AI Summary generator with Speakable schema Generate “Key Takeaways” for any post or page via your chosen LLM (OpenAI, Anthropic Claude, Google Gemini, or DeepSeek). The summary injects above your content as a styled block with Speakable schema — the JSON-LD that voice assistants read aloud. Use the Regenerate button in the post editor, the Gutenberg block, or the Elementor widget. Unlimited manual generations. FAQ schema generator with DataForSEO A strong signal for AI Overviews. RankReady can query DataForSEO for the real “People Also Ask” questions ranking for your post’s focus keyword, then has your chosen LLM write the answers. Output is FAQPage JSON-LD — the structured data Google AI Overviews and Perplexity frequently cite over plain article text. Don’t use DataForSEO? Type your own questions and let the LLM answer them. Unlimited manual generations. Setup guide in the FAQ section below. Author Box with basic E-E-A-T schema E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness) is what AI models use to decide which sources to trust. RankReady ships a basic Author Box — name, job title, employer, bio, headshot, and basic sameAs links — with Article, Speakable, and FAQPage schema. It auto-detects Rank Math, Yoast, and AIOSEO and skips duplicate output. Display it anywhere via the Gutenberg block or the Elementor widget. Markdown endpoints for AI agents Every published post and page is served as clean Markdown at /post-slug.md with YAML frontmatter (title, author, dates). AI agents — Claude Desktop, Cursor, ChatGPT, custom clients — read Markdown faster than HTML. Content negotiation via Accept: text/markdown lets crawlers fetch the format they prefer with no URL changes. Open Knowledge Format (OKF) — Google’s standard for AI agents Google’s Open Knowledge Format (OKF v0.1) is a vendor-neutral way to hand your whole site to AI agents as a clean, linked bundle of Markdown — instead of making them scrape your HTML. Turn it on from the AI Crawlers tab and RankReady serves a complete OKF bundle at /okf/: /okf/index.md — a manifest of every page, grouped by type, each linked to its concept file /okf/{slug}.md — one Markdown concept per post, tagged with type, description, canonical URL and tags /okf/log.md — a dated change history One-click .zip export for upload to Google Cloud Knowledge Catalog or a Git repository The bundle is generated entirely on your own server (nothing is sent to Google or anyone else), refreshes automatically whenever you publish or edit, and respects your noindex and per-post exclusion settings — noindexed content never enters the bundle. MCP via the WordPress Abilities API RankReady registers read-only abilities with the Model Context Protocol through the WordPress Abilities API (wp_register_ability()). On WordPress 7.0 these are surfaced by the official MCP Adapter — no bundled MCP server, no extra service to run. Insights — AI referrals, bot activity, freshness The Insights tab gives you real, server-side analytics with no third-party scripts: Training & Citation Bots — Which AI crawlers fetched which pages (GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot, OAI-SearchBot, Google-Extended, and more). Each citation-bot hit is a live AI answer that retrieved your page. Real AI Referrals — Humans clicking through from chatgpt.com, perplexity.ai, claude.ai, gemini.google.com, and copilot.microsoft.com, tracked via the HTTP Referer header. Content Freshness scanner — Buckets posts into Stale, Going stale, and Fresh, with one-click dateModified refresh to signal recency to AI crawlers. All counts are stored locally in your own tables — never sent to POSIMYTH. 31 AI crawler controls + auto robots.txt Granular allow/block toggles for 31 AI bots: GPTBot, ChatGPT-User, OAI-SearchBot, ClaudeBot, Claude-Web, anthropic-ai, PerplexityBot, Perplexity-User, Google-Extended, Bytespider, CCBot, FacebookBot, Meta-ExternalAgent, Applebot-Extended, DuckAssistBot, YouBot, AI2Bot, Diffbot, Cohere-ai, Kagibot, and more. Auto-syncs your choices to robots.txt — both the WordPress virtual robots.txt and a physical ABSPATH/robots.txt if another plugin intercepts the URL. Plus Content Signals (ai-train, search, ai-input directives per contentsignals.org). Cache compatibility + Diagnostics RankReady persists cache-bypass entries to each cache plugin’s stored configuration so server-level caches honour the bypass before PHP runs — tested with WP Rocket, LiteSpeed Cache, W3 Total Cache, WP Super Cache, WP Fastest Cache, Breeze, SG Optimizer, Hummingbird, Cache Enabler, Comet Cache, Swift Performance, NitroPack, Perfmatters, Cloudflare APO, Pantheon, Kinsta, and WP Engine. The Diagnostics card runs live endpoint probes, detects active SEO plugins, checks rewrite rules and REST routes, scans for cache conflicts, and gives you a one-click plain-text report for support — every failure ships with a one-line fix. Coming soon A companion add-on (in development) will layer advanced AI SEO automation on top of the free build: Auto-generate AI Summaries and FAQs on publish Bulk-generate summaries and FAQs across your whole library HowTo and ItemList JSON-LD Advanced Person / E-E-A-T schema (credentials, education, certifications, memberships, awards, Wikidata / ORCID / Scholar / LinkedIn, editorial & fact-check policies, Author Trust Panel) Custom post type support beyond posts and pages Headless / WPGraphQL API for decoupled front ends These appear as “Coming soon” placeholders in the plugin and ship no code in the free build. Everything listed above the “Coming soon” heading is fully free, with no caps on manual generation. More Plugins from POSIMYTH RankReady is part of the POSIMYTH Innovations product family. If you build WordPress sites, you’ll probably want these too: The Plus Addons for Elementor — 120+ premium Elementor widgets with Smart Animations, Carousels, and advanced filters. Powers 500,000+ sites. Nexter Blocks – Theme & Extension — The fast, AI-ready Gutenberg block library and theme framework. Built for Core Web Vitals. UiChemy – Figma to WordPress — Convert any Figma design into responsive Elementor or Gutenberg layouts in one click. No code. WDesignKit — A growing library of pre-built websites, pages, blocks, and templates for Elementor and Gutenberg. SproutOS — The AI-native content operating system. Plan, draft, brief, and publish at scale. Privacy & Third-Party Services RankReady is privacy-respecting by default. POSIMYTH does not collect, store, or transmit any data from your site. No telemetry. No analytics. No “phone home”. Your API keys are stored only in your own wp_options table. The plugin contacts third-party services only when you explicitly enter API credentials AND trigger a generation action. Each service is opt-in and uses your own API key: OpenAI (Terms of Use · Privacy Policy) — When you generate an AI Summary or FAQ with OpenAI as your provider, the post’s title and body text are sent to https://api.openai.com/v1/chat/completions using your own API key. The generated response is stored as post meta on your site. Nothing is sent without an explicit click from you. Anthropic Claude (Terms of Use · Privacy Policy) — When Anthropic is your provider, the same post text is sent to https://api.anthropic.com/v1/messages using your own API key. Same opt-in trigger; same one-shot use. Google Gemini (API Terms · Privacy Policy) — When Gemini is your provider, the same post text is sent to https://generativelanguage.googleapis.com/v1beta/models/ :generateContent using your own API key. DeepSeek (Terms of Use · Privacy Policy) — When DeepSeek is your provider, the same post text is sent to https://api.deepseek.com/chat/completions using your own API key. DataForSEO (Terms of Service · Privacy Policy) — When you trigger the FAQ Generator, the post’s focus keyword is sent to https://api.dataforseo.com/v3/serp/google/organic/live/advanced using your own DataForSEO Login plus Password. Only the keyword string is sent, not the article text. Discovered questions are stored as post meta on your site. No other endpoints are contacted. The plugin never sends any data on its own initiative — every outbound request is the direct result of an administrator action.