Crawlantix AI Bot Tracker vs VigIA – AI Visibility, Analytics & Control

Crawlantix AI Bot Tracker monitors visits from 30+ AI crawlers and gives you visibility into how bots interact with your site. See which bots visit, what pages they crawl, and catch misbehaving bots with a built-in logging-only honeypot. Lightweight, privacy-first, and fully functional out of the box. Free forever — no artificial limits on bot detection. Tracked Bots (30+): GPTBot / ChatGPT-User / OAI-SearchBot (OpenAI) ClaudeBot / Claude-Web / anthropic-ai (Anthropic) Googlebot / Google-Extended (Google / Gemini) bingbot (Microsoft / Copilot) PerplexityBot (Perplexity) DeepSeek, Qwen (Alibaba), Mistral AI Applebot-Extended (Apple Intelligence) Meta-ExternalAgent (Meta AI) Bytespider (ByteDance) CCBot (Common Crawl), Amazonbot, YouBot, DuckDuckBot AI2Bot, Diffbot, Timpibot, PetalBot SemrushBot, AhrefsBot, DataForSeoBot, MJ12bot, DotBot Features: Lightweight Bot Detection (30+ Bots) Hooks into WordPress init with a priority-1 action. Bails immediately on non-AI User-Agents — zero performance cost for human visitors. All 30+ bots tracked. Dashboard with Charts Clean dashboard with trend chart and provider breakdown pie chart (Chart.js, bundled locally). Summary cards show total visits, unique bots, pages crawled, and daily averages. No external dependencies. Bot Activity Table Dedicated tab showing all detected bots with visits, bytes transferred, 24h sparklines, verification status, and honeypot hit counts. Crawled Pages See which pages bots visit most, which bots crawl them, and when they were last seen. Honeypot Endpoint (Logging Only) A CSS-hidden, aria-hidden, rel=nofollow link is injected in the footer. Only raw link-extracting bots will follow it. Visits are logged for transparency. Active defense (blocking, tarpit, rate-limit, decoy, shadowban) is reserved for the paid build. Bot Verification Reverse DNS (FCrDNS) verification for major bots — confirms Googlebot, GPTBot, ClaudeBot, etc. are actually who they claim to be. Privacy First IP addresses are SHA-256 hashed with a per-install salt before storage. Raw IPs are never saved. Includes WordPress Privacy API exporter and eraser hooks so data-subject access and erasure requests can flow through the standard WordPress Tools → Personal Data workflow. AI Discovery Layer Serves ai-plugin.json (a discovery manifest that tells visiting AI agents the site is monitored) and llms.txt / llms-full.txt (text content authored by the admin via WordPress pages with slugs llms-txt and llms-full-txt) at the site root. Data Retention Bot visit data is retained for 30 days. Older records are automatically pruned via WP-Cron. External Services This plugin connects to the following external services: Reverse DNS Lookups The bot verification feature performs reverse DNS (FCrDNS) lookups using PHP’s gethostbyaddr() and gethostbyname() functions to verify that bots are who they claim to be (e.g., confirming a request claiming to be Googlebot actually originates from Google’s network). These lookups send the bot’s IP address to your server’s configured DNS resolver and the authoritative DNS servers for the IP address’s reverse DNS zone. Under some privacy regimes, IP addresses may be considered personal data. This feature runs automatically when a known AI bot visits your site and cannot currently be disabled via the admin UI (a filter hook crawlantix_enable_verification is available for developers). No other external services, third-party APIs, or remote requests are used by this plugin. All analytics data is stored locally in your WordPress database. Chart.js is bundled locally — no CDN requests are made. Privacy Policy Crawlantix AI Bot Tracker is designed with privacy as a core principle: Bot traffic only. The plugin only tracks automated bot traffic identified by User-Agent strings. Human visitors are not tracked and no cookies are set. No raw IP addresses stored. All IP addresses are SHA-256 hashed with a per-install random salt before storage (or AUTH_SALT when defined in wp-config.php). The original IP address cannot be recovered from the hash. Note: pseudonymous IP hashes may still be considered personal data under GDPR. Data stored per bot visit: IP hash, User-Agent string, requested URL, HTTP referrer URL, request method, timestamp, and derived fields (bytes transferred, bot verification status). Referrer URLs may contain personal data depending on the referring site. WordPress Privacy API integration. The plugin registers exporter and eraser callbacks with WordPress core, so data-subject access and erasure requests filed through Tools → Personal Data flow correctly. No external data transmission. All analytics data remains in your local WordPress database. No data is sent to Crawlantix or third-party services. The only external communication is DNS lookups for bot verification (see External Services above). Data retention controls. Bot visit data is automatically pruned after 30 days. Administrators can delete all collected data on uninstall via the “Delete Data on Uninstall” Settings toggle. For sites that require a formal privacy policy disclosure, you may note: “We use the Crawlantix AI Bot Tracker plugin to monitor automated AI bot traffic to our site. This plugin records bot User-Agent strings, pseudonymous IP hashes, pages visited, referrer URLs, and timestamps for detected bot traffic only. Raw IP addresses are cryptographically hashed before storage. No human visitor data is collected.” Premium Version Crawlantix also offers paid tiers at crawlantix.com for site owners who need active bot defense in addition to monitoring. The paid build adds the following features on top of everything in this free version: Protect tier Active honeypot responses: HTTP 403 block, tarpit (random 5–25s delay with worker-exhaustion safeguards), rate limit 429, decoy content, shadowban. Auto-block of repeat honeypot offenders, with configurable thresholds. Per-IP response rules — apply a chosen response strategy to specific IP hashes (up to 200 rules). Custom honeypot paths (up to 5) with a reserved-route safety list. Email alerts for honeypot hits and parameter explosion patterns. Robots.txt trap entries that catch non-compliant scrapers. Optional override that suppresses the WordPress core /wp/v2/users REST endpoints (username-enumeration hardening, off by default and easy to opt back in). Optimize tier Full REST API at /wp-json/ai-tracker/v1/ with API key authentication and 13 endpoints (status, stats, page, trends, bots, top-pages, report, export, alerts, honeypot, crawled-pages, etc.). GeoIP location tracking with MaxMind GeoLite2. Crawl Analytics tab with deeper traffic-quality metrics. Extended data retention up to 365 days. Scale tier Backup & restore — export all data as JSON; import with merge or replace modes. Unlimited retention. Priority support. The paid build is a drop-in upgrade: same plugin slug, same database tables, same option keys, so all your historical bot data carries over with no migration step on your part.

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.