FindAstra vs AI Search Optimization – llms.txt, Schema & AEO Audit – Citevera

FindAstra is AI product search for WooCommerce. It helps your store understand what shoppers actually mean, not just the exact words they type. Someone searching for “comfortable shoes for hiking” will find your “Trail Running Sneakers” even when the title never mentions comfort or hiking. Ordinary keyword search only matches products that literally contain the words a shopper types. So a customer who describes things in their own way lands on a “no results” page and leaves. FindAstra closes that gap. It reads the intent behind each search, puts the most relevant products first, and offers helpful suggestions instead of dead ends. And the free version runs completely on its own. There are no API keys to paste, no account to create, and no monthly fees. The AI runs right inside the shopper’s browser, so nothing about your catalog or your customers is sent to an outside server, and you can index your entire catalog with no product limit. What your shoppers get Answers, not just matches. Searches are understood by meaning, so shoppers reach the right products even when their wording differs from yours. Live suggestions as they type. A search-as-you-type dropdown attaches to your existing search bar, with no theme editing. A results page that makes sense. Your normal WooCommerce results page is simply re-ordered by relevance, keeping your theme’s design exactly as it is. No more empty pages. When nothing is a strong match, shoppers see popular products instead of a dead end. What you get as a store owner Set up in minutes. Activate, click index once, and AI search is live. No keys, no account, no configuration headaches. Private by default. Your products and your customers’ searches stay on your own site. Fits your store. Works with classic and block themes, and includes a search block, a shortcode, and a sidebar widget. Developers also get filter hooks and a REST endpoint to build on. How it works, in plain terms When you click index, FindAstra reads each product and builds a small understanding of what it is. When a shopper searches, it compares their wording to that understanding and lists the closest products first. The first time it runs, the browser downloads a small AI model (about 33 MB) and reuses it from then on, so searches stay fast. FindAstra Pro (optional) A separate paid version is available at findastra.com for stores that want more. It adds optional server-side engines for very large catalogs (using your own OpenAI or Hugging Face key), multilingual search for WPML and Polylang, and built-in search analytics. The free version here is complete on its own, and nothing in it is locked or time limited. External services Which external service (if any) FindAstra contacts depends on the search engine you choose during setup. Each is described below, including what data is sent and when. Hugging Face model hub (huggingface.co) Used by the default Local engine. The first time the Local engine runs (when you index products in wp-admin, or when a shopper performs a search), the browser downloads a roughly 33 MB open-source AI model from the Hugging Face model hub and caches it locally for later visits. Only the model files are fetched. No store, product, shopper, or site data is ever sent. After the download, all search runs entirely in the browser. Hugging Face terms of service: https://huggingface.co/terms-of-service . Privacy policy: https://huggingface.co/privacy OpenAI API (api.openai.com) Used only if you select the OpenAI engine and enter your own API key. At index time, the text of each product (its title and the fields you choose to include) is sent to OpenAI to generate an embedding; at search time, the shopper’s query text is sent. Requests are authenticated with the API key you provide and are made only while the OpenAI engine is the active provider. OpenAI terms of use: https://openai.com/policies/terms-of-use . Privacy policy: https://openai.com/policies/privacy-policy Hugging Face Inference API (router.huggingface.co) Used only if you select the Hugging Face engine and enter your own access token. The same data as the OpenAI engine (product text at index time, query text at search time) is sent to the Hugging Face Inference API to generate embeddings, authenticated with the token you provide, and only while the Hugging Face engine is the active provider. Hugging Face terms of service: https://huggingface.co/terms-of-service . Privacy policy: https://huggingface.co/privacy

Your content is not getting cited by AI answer engines. Classic SEO plugins (Yoast, RankMath, AIOSEO) optimize for Google’s blue links. Citevera optimizes for the new layer that sits above them – the one that writes the answer. Citevera is the WordPress plugin for AI search optimization. It makes your site citable by ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and Google AI Overviews, with one-click fixes that don’t require editing theme code or touching header templates. Who this is for Site owners who have noticed their brand never appears in AI-generated answers. Marketing teams that want to stay ahead of the AI-search shift. Agencies supporting clients through the AEO / GEO transition. Why Citevera Written for AI answer engines, not retrofitted from classic SEO. Plays nicely with Yoast, RankMath, and AIOSEO – never duplicates schema they already emit. Free tier makes zero external HTTP calls. Your data stays on your WordPress server. Paid tier connects to the same audit pipeline behind scan.citevera.com, so your WP plugin and your SaaS account share one license. Citevera also supports non-WordPress sites through a SKILL.md export for Claude Code. Full documentation at https://citevera.com/docs/claude-code-integration. Free features One-click site audit with the rule-based checklist used by scan.citevera.com. llms.txt generator, served dynamically at yoursite.com/llms.txt with a 1-hour cache. AI-crawler robots.txt control: per-agent Allow / Disallow for GPTBot, OAI-SearchBot, ChatGPT-User, ClaudeBot, Claude-User, Claude-SearchBot, PerplexityBot, Google-Extended, CCBot, Applebot-Extended, YouBot, cohere-ai, and Meta-ExternalAgent – plus legacy tokens (anthropic-ai, Claude-Web) honored for older robots.txt files. Schema.org JSON-LD for Organization, WebSite, Article, BreadcrumbList. FAQPage schema, auto-detected from FAQ blocks on posts and pages. Monthly scheduled audit with email alerts when your AI-search readiness score drops. Yoast, RankMath, and AIOSEO compatibility detection. Premium features (active Citevera license required) The premium tier connects the plugin to the Citevera cloud service at api.citevera.com. These features call our AI inference pipeline and require an active subscription. See the External services section below for the exact data sent and the Terms / Privacy links. AI-powered cloud audit (calls api.citevera.com). Recommendations marked auto-applicable can be applied from your Citevera dashboard at app.citevera.com; this plugin then applies them on your site (llms.txt, schema JSON-LD, robots rules) within a few minutes. Gutenberg block toolbar: select any paragraph, click “Optimize for AI”, see a diff, accept or decline (calls our AI rewrite service). Sidebar AI-answerability score inside the Gutenberg editor (instant, computed locally). Competitor tracking and monthly client portfolio reports at app.citevera.com. External services Citevera Free does not connect to any external service. (The free tier performs self-requests to your own site’s /llms.txt, /robots.txt and sitemap URLs to verify they are being served – loopback checks of the same kind WordPress core’s Site Health uses. No third party is involved.) When you paste a license key to unlock premium features, Citevera connects to api.citevera.com (operated by Citevera) to: Verify the key and return your tier entitlements (one request on activation; background refresh every 12 hours after). Run cloud audits when you explicitly click “Run full audit”. Rewrite selected content when you explicitly click “Optimize for AI” in the Gutenberg editor. The data sent to api.citevera.com during a cloud audit is a summary of your site: post counts, active plugins, active theme, detected schema types, and a sample of up to 10 page contents. The admin previews this exact payload before the first cloud audit runs. Rewrite requests send only the text you selected plus minimal surrounding context (post title, post type, adjacent paragraphs) for a single AI call. Terms of service: https://citevera.com/legal/terms Privacy policy: https://citevera.com/legal/privacy Development This plugin ships its full source code inside the deployed zip to comply with WordPress.org Guidelines 1 and 4 (public access to source code and build tools). PHP source: src/ JavaScript / TypeScript source for the admin React app and the Gutenberg editor integration: assets/admin/src/ and assets/editor/src/ Build configuration: package.json, tsconfig.json, composer.json To rebuild the compiled JS bundles in assets/admin/build/ and assets/editor/build/: npm install npm run build The build uses @wordpress/scripts (webpack under the hood). PHP autoloading is generated by Composer with: composer install –no-dev –optimize-autoloader