The WordPress plugin that gets your content cited by AI.

RankReady is the most complete WordPress plugin for AI search optimization. It combines all pillars of LLM SEO into a single, lightweight package: AI-generated content, intelligent schema markup that auto-detects your content type, LLMs.txt, Markdown endpoints, AI crawler management, AI crawler access analytics, content freshness monitoring, multi-layer cache bypass, and a full EEAT Author Box with Person JSON-LD schema that powers author identity for ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews citations.

Status: v1.1.0-beta.5 — public beta. All features unlocked. Free while in beta. RankReady is GPL-2.0 open-source. Download the zip below, install in WordPress, done. Auto-updates flow silently — no token, no license input, no config. Free and paid tiers arrive after the beta period.

RankReady is built to score 100/100 on both AI readiness checkers. Test your own site after installing:

Both checkers run free, no account needed. Enter your URL and run. RankReady handles everything both tools check — no manual configuration required once the LLM Optimization tab is enabled.

AI search is replacing traditional search. ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews, and Claude are now how people find information. But most WordPress sites are invisible to these AI engines.

The research is clear:

• 81% of AI-cited pages include schema markup (AccuraCast 2025)
• Pages with FAQPage schema are 3.2x more likely to appear in AI Overviews
• 65% of AI citations target content updated within the past year
• 44% of citations come from the top third of the page
• ChatGPT search results correlate 87% with Bing's top 10
• AI agent traffic grew 6,900% year-over-year in 2025
• Incomplete schema causes an 18% citation penalty vs. no schema at all

RankReady handles all of this automatically.

No other WordPress plugin combines all of these:

Auto-generates SEO-optimized FAQ Q&A pairs using a two-stage pipeline:

1. DataForSEO discovers real search questions (keyword suggestions + related keywords)
2. OpenAI generates answers using your actual page content + brand terms

Why it matters:

• FAQPage schema drives 3.2x more AI Overview appearances than any other schema type
• Brand entity injection uses semantic triples (Subject-Predicate-Object) to naturally associate your brand with relevant topics
• Focus keyword auto-detected from Rank Math, Yoast, AIOSEO, or SEOPress
• Content hash prevents duplicate API calls when content hasn't changed
• Bulk generation across all post types with resume capability
• Auto-Generate on Publish toggle — off by default, mirrors the AI Summary auto-generate behavior

Generates concise bullet-point summaries from post content via OpenAI on publish/update.

• Content-hash caching: only regenerates when content changes
• Custom prompt support for controlling summary style and tone
• Included in Markdown endpoints and schema output
• Bulk regenerate with progress tracking and resume
• Per-post disable toggle

RankReady automatically detects your content type and injects the right schema — no manual blocks, no configuration needed.

Complete Article/BlogPosting schema with AI citation optimization:

• headline, datePublished, dateModified, author, publisher, image, description
• speakable markup for voice-query optimization
• about entities from hierarchical taxonomies (categories) — works with ALL custom post types
• mentions entities from non-hierarchical taxonomies (tags) — works with ALL custom taxonomies
• hasPart with AI summary content
• Automatic detection: skips when Rank Math, Yoast, or AIOSEO is active (no duplicate schema)
• FAQPage schema injected separately when FAQ data exists
• Duplicate detection: skips FAQ schema when Rank Math/Yoast/AIOSEO FAQ blocks exist in content

Scans your existing post content for step-by-step patterns and injects HowTo schema automatically. No manual HowTo blocks needed — if your content already has steps, RankReady detects them.

How detection works:

• Title must contain "how to", "step by step", "tutorial", or "guide to"
• Content is scanned for step patterns using three methods:
  1. Step N headings: <h2>Step 1: Do this</h2>, <h3>Step 2 - Do that</h3>
  2. Numbered headings: <h2>1. Do this</h2>, <h3>2) Do that</h3>
  3. Ordered lists: <ol><li>First do this</li><li>Then do that</li></ol>
• Requires minimum 2 steps to inject schema
• Extracts step name, description text (up to 500 chars), and step images automatically
• Skips if Rank Math HowTo block or Yoast How-To block already exists in the post

Scans your listicle posts and injects ItemList schema automatically. Perfect for "Best of", "Top N", and comparison posts that AI models use to build recommendation answers.

How detection works:

• Title must match listicle patterns: "10 Best WordPress Plugins", "Top 5 Elementor Addons", "Best Plugins for 2025"
• Items extracted from numbered headings or consecutive h2/h3 sequences (auto-filters generic sections like Introduction, FAQ, Conclusion)
• Requires minimum 3 items
• Extracts per item: name, URL, description (first paragraph, 200 chars), and image

Mutually exclusive with HowTo: A post gets one schema type or the other based on title patterns.

Serves /llms.txt and /llms-full.txt per the llmstxt.org specification.

• Structured site index for AI models to understand your content
• /llms.txt — token-efficient links and descriptions
• /llms-full.txt — full content as clean markdown
• Respects noindex from Rank Math, Yoast, AIOSEO, SEOPress
• Taxonomy controls: exclude categories and tags
• Transient caching with configurable TTL
• Multisite-safe: skips physical robots.txt sync on multisite

Every post available as clean Markdown at URL.md:

https://example.com/my-post/     -> HTML
https://example.com/my-post.md   -> Clean Markdown

• YAML frontmatter: title, date, author, description, categories, tags, word count
• Strips Elementor, Divi, WPBakery, Beaver Builder markup
• Content negotiation via Accept: text/markdown header (RFC 9110)
• <link rel="alternate" type="text/markdown"> auto-discovery
• 5-minute transient cache keyed by post_modified — no repeated processing on bot crawls
• Cache bypass headers on every response — Cloudflare APO, Varnish, nginx, all WP cache plugins (see below)

Per-crawler toggles for 31 AI bots with automatic robots.txt management:

Strategy support: Block training bots (GPTBot) while allowing search bots (OAI-SearchBot, ChatGPT-User). Per RFC 9309 spec. Append-only, never modifies existing plugin rules.

Zero-config bot tracking that logs every hit to your LLM endpoints — llms.txt, llms-full.txt, .md URLs, and homepage markdown — and shows exactly which AI crawler read which piece of content.

What gets logged per hit:

• Bot name (human-readable, e.g. "GPTBot (OpenAI)")
• Endpoint type (llms.txt / llms-full.txt / .md URL / Homepage .md)
• Post title, post type (CPT), and post ID — so you know exactly which article was read
• URL path and timestamp

25 AI bots tracked (User-Agent substring matching, ordered most-specific first): GPTBot, ChatGPT-User, OAI-SearchBot, ClaudeBot, Claude-Web, Anthropic AI, Google-Extended, PerplexityBot, Cohere AI, AI2Bot, Bytespider, FacebookBot, Meta-ExternalAgent, Meta-ExternalFetcher, YouBot, DuckAssistBot, Diffbot, Applebot-Extended, Applebot, CCBot, Omgili, Timpibot, ImagesiftBot, Magpie (Brave), Amazonbot.

Organized admin dashboard with 5 sections:

1. Summary strip — 6 stat cards: Hits (30d), Hits (7d), Unique bots, Unique pages crawled, llms.txt hits, Markdown hits
2. By Bot — Expandable grid rows: Bot | Total | llms.txt | llms-full | .md URL | Home .md | Pages | Last Seen. Click to expand and see the top 5 pages that specific bot read most (title linked to edit post, CPT badge, URL, hit count)
3. By Content Type — CSS bar chart showing hit counts and unique post counts grouped by WordPress post type (post, page, custom CPTs)
4. Top Pages — Table of most-crawled content: Title | Type | Hits | Bots | "Read by" bot badge chips | URL
5. Live Hit Log — Collapsible log of the 40 most recent bot hits: Time | Bot | Endpoint | Type | Page/Post | URL

Scalability built in:

• Human traffic generates zero rows — only 25 known bot UAs are logged
• 30-day rolling retention (daily WP-Cron prune)
• Hard 50,000-row cap — oldest rows deleted if exceeded, zero per-request overhead
• DB schema stores only what's needed — user_agent excluded (redundant; bot_name captures identity)
• 4 DB indexes: bot_name, logged_at, endpoint, post_type

A centralized RR_Cache utility class covers every known CDN and WordPress page-cache layer. Markdown responses and homepage content negotiation need to bypass caches — otherwise a CDN serves cached HTML to a bot requesting text/markdown.

CDN layers handled:

WordPress page-cache layers handled:

WP Rocket, LiteSpeed Cache, W3 Total Cache, WP Super Cache, WP Fastest Cache, Cloudflare WP plugin, Nginx Helper, SG Optimizer, Breeze, Hummingbird, Cache Enabler, Comet Cache, Swift Performance, Autoptimize, Pantheon — via both PHP constants (DONOTCACHEPAGE, LSCWP_NO_CACHE, DONOTCACHEOBJECT, DONOTCACHEDB) and plugin-specific purge actions/methods.

No dashboard configuration required — RankReady sets the correct headers on every markdown and llms.txt response automatically. Works with any cache setup.

Monitor content staleness that impacts AI visibility:

• 65% of AI citations target content from the past year
• 50% of citations are from content less than 13 weeks old
• Configurable threshold: 60, 90, 180, or 365 days
• Urgency levels: critical (>1yr), high (>6mo), moderate (>threshold)
• Shows summary/FAQ status per post
• Fresh percentage dashboard
• Direct edit links for stale posts

Reassign post authors across any post type for E-E-A-T optimization:

• Filter by post type, date range, source author
• Preview count before executing
• Batch processing with progress tracking
• Capped at 10,000 posts per operation

• Health Check: 12-point diagnostic scan of all plugin features
• API Usage Tracking: OpenAI tokens + DataForSEO cost monitoring
• Error Log: Recent API errors with source, timestamp, post reference
• Bulk Operations: Summary, FAQ, and Start Over with resume capability

Production-grade read-only REST API built for headless WordPress — Next.js, Nuxt, Astro, SvelteKit, Gatsby, Faust.js, WPEngine Atlas, and any frontend where the backend domain is separate from the rendering layer.

Endpoints (namespace rankready/v1/public/):

Also exposes rankready_faq, rankready_summary, rankready_schema as native REST fields on /wp/v2/posts/{id} — so Faust.js and any existing REST consumer picks them up automatically.

Enterprise features:

• HTTP caching: ETag (weak, payload + version hash), Last-Modified, Cache-Control: public, s-maxage=N, stale-while-revalidate=86400, automatic 304 Not Modified
• CORS hardening: Allowlist from settings, Vary: Origin, Access-Control-Expose-Headers: ETag, Last-Modified, X-RR-*
• Rate limiting: Transient per-IP (default 120 req/min, configurable), real IP detection via CF-Connecting-IP / X-Forwarded-For / X-Real-IP, authenticated editors exempt, 429 + Retry-After on exceed
• On-Demand Revalidation: Fire-and-forget POST to Next.js / Nuxt endpoint when FAQ / summary / schema changes. blocking=>false, timeout=>0.01 so the editor flow never waits. X-RR-Secret header verified with hash_equals()
• WPGraphQL integration: Conditional rankReadyFaq, rankReadySummary, rankReadySchema fields on every public post type when WPGraphQL is active
• Multilingual: Polylang + WPML support — lang query arg on slug / list endpoints
• RFC 7807 errors: 4xx / 5xx responses transformed to application/problem+json
• Security: Per-page capped at 100, password-protected posts return 403, hash_equals() for secrets, no admin / PII in any response
• Observability: X-RR-Version, X-RR-Request-Id, X-RR-Cache headers for debugging

Off by default. Enable in RankReady > Headless tab.

A full EEAT author identity system that maps every profile field directly to Schema.org Person data. Built for AI citation — authors with verifiable identity, structured credentials, and priority-ordered sameAs links get cited significantly more by Perplexity and Google AI Overviews.

How it works:

1. Fill the author profile — Every WordPress user gets a new "RankReady Author Box" section on user-edit.php with 23 schema-mapped fields (job title, employer, bio, headshot, started year, topics of expertise, credentials suffix, education repeater, certifications repeater, memberships repeater, awards repeater, Wikidata QID, Wikipedia, ORCID, Google Scholar, LinkedIn, GitHub, YouTube, X, personal site, contact form URL).

2. Add the block or widget — Insert the RankReady Author Box Gutenberg block or the matching Elementor widget on any post, or enable auto-display globally from RankReady → Author Box settings.

3. RankReady emits Person JSON-LD — On every article the author appears in Article.author as a full Person node with jobTitle, worksFor (Organization), description, image, knowsAbout, sameAs, alumniOf, hasCredential, memberOf, award, contactPoint, publishingPrinciples, and identifier PropertyValue for both ORCID and Wikidata.

Priority-ordered sameAs (research-backed):

Wikidata → Wikipedia → ORCID → Google Scholar → LinkedIn → GitHub → YouTube → X → personal site

The first three are the canonical entity anchors LLMs actually reuse. Wikidata QIDs are what Google's Knowledge Graph and every major LLM internally resolve entities against.

Per-post Author Trust fields:

• Fact-checked by (user picker) → Article.reviewedBy[]
• Reviewed by (user picker) → Article.reviewedBy[]
• Last reviewed (date) → Article.lastReviewed

Zero schema conflict with other SEO plugins — When Rank Math, Yoast SEO, AIOSEO, SEOPress, The SEO Framework, or Slim SEO is active, RankReady hooks into each plugin's schema graph filter and enhances the existing Person node in place — never overwriting existing fields.

Three layouts:

• Card — Full end-of-article box: headshot, name + credentials, job title + employer + years, bio, expertise pills, education + certifications, social icons, reviewed-by line, editorial policy links
• Compact — Small sidebar-ready variant: condensed byline, bio, social icons
• Inline byline — Healthline-style above-the-fold row: "By [Name]" + job title + reviewed-by line

The Gutenberg Summary, FAQ, and Author Box blocks ship full typography controls. Every text layer exposes:

• Font Family — Reads theme.json global fonts automatically. Kadence, Astra, GeneratePress, Twenty Twenty-Four, and every block theme show up with "Theme — Inter" / "Custom — Space Grotesk" labels
• Font Weight — 100 Thin through 900 Black
• Font Size (px) — with 0 = inherit from theme semantics
• Line Height, Letter Spacing, Text Transform

Post Published/Updated
    |
    |-- Is Rank Math / Yoast / AIOSEO active?
    |     |-- YES -> Skip Article schema (SEO plugin handles it)
    |     |-- NO  -> Inject Article + Speakable JSON-LD
    |
    |-- Does FAQ data exist for this post?
    |     |-- YES -> Does Rank Math/Yoast FAQ block exist in content?
    |     |         |-- YES -> Skip FAQPage schema (SEO plugin handles it)
    |     |         |-- NO  -> Inject FAQPage JSON-LD
    |     |-- NO  -> Skip
    |
    |-- Title contains "how to", "tutorial", "step by step"?
    |     |-- YES -> Does Rank Math/Yoast HowTo block exist?
    |     |         |-- YES -> Skip (SEO plugin handles it)
    |     |         |-- NO  -> Extract steps from content -> Inject HowTo JSON-LD
    |     |-- NO  -> Continue
    |
    |-- Title matches listicle pattern ("Best N", "Top N", "N Tools")?
          |-- YES -> Extract items from headings -> Inject ItemList JSON-LD
          |-- NO  -> Skip

Every schema type has duplicate detection. RankReady never conflicts with Rank Math, Yoast, or AIOSEO.

AI Crawler visits your site
    |
    |-- robots.txt
    |     |-- Allow: /llms.txt
    |     |-- Allow: /llms-full.txt
    |     |-- Allow: /*.md$
    |
    |-- /llms.txt (structured site index)        ← hit logged to AI Crawler Access Log
    |     |-- Links to every published post
    |     |-- Links to /llms-full.txt
    |
    |-- /llms-full.txt (full content dump)       ← hit logged to AI Crawler Access Log
    |     |-- Every post as inline markdown
    |
    |-- /any-post.md (per-post markdown)         ← hit logged with post_id + post_type
    |     |-- YAML frontmatter
    |     |-- AI Summary (key takeaways)
    |     |-- Clean content
    |     |-- Cache bypass headers (CF APO, Varnish, nginx, all WP caches)
    |
    |-- Homepage (Accept: text/markdown)         ← hit logged as 'homepage' type
    |     |-- Cache bypass headers force CDN to serve PHP response
    |     |-- Returns site overview as markdown
    |
    |-- HTML page
          |-- Article JSON-LD + Speakable schema
          |-- FAQPage JSON-LD (if FAQ data exists)
          |-- HowTo JSON-LD (if tutorial/how-to post)
          |-- ItemList JSON-LD (if listicle post)
          |-- <link rel="alternate" type="text/markdown">
          |-- Link HTTP header to .md version

Honest assessment: The maximum achievable score on isitagentready.com for a content site is ~55-60/100. The remaining checks require live MCP servers, OAuth infrastructure, or payment endpoints that don't apply to standard WordPress content sites.

Beta builds auto-update silently. Install once and forget.

   Install rankready.zip
          |
          v
   Plugin activates a pre-issued beta license against store.posimyth.com
   (silent, on first wp_loaded — no UI, no user action)
          |
          v
   WordPress Update Checker (EDD SL) polls store.posimyth.com daily
          |
          v
   New beta release available? → "Update available" in WP Admin → Plugins
   WordPress installs the update like any normal plugin

No token needed. No license field. No manual steps. The beta license is pre-issued and baked in — every install auto-activates and receives updates automatically.

1. Download rankready.zip from GitHub Releases → Latest

   ⚠️ Use the rankready.zip asset — not the "Source code" zip. The source code archive has a different folder name and will break auto-updates.

2. Plugins → Add New → Upload Plugin in WordPress admin — upload rankready.zip
3. Activate → go to RankReady in the admin menu
4. Configure:
   • Settings tab: OpenAI key + DataForSEO credentials
   • Content AI tab: AI Summary and FAQ Generator — post types, prompts, brand terms, auto-generate toggles
   • Authority tab: Author Box EEAT profile fields, layouts, typography
   • AI Crawlers tab: LLMs.txt, Markdown endpoints, per-bot robots.txt controls, AI Crawler Access Log
   • Advanced tab: Bulk operations, freshness alerts, health check, headless API

After install, future updates appear silently in WP Admin → Plugins — no license key entry, no configuration. The beta license is pre-activated automatically.

• WordPress 6.2+
• PHP 7.4+
• OpenAI API key (for summary + FAQ generation)
• DataForSEO credentials (for FAQ question discovery)

• All REST endpoints require authentication + capability checks
• $wpdb->prepare() with positional placeholders on all dynamic SQL
• sanitize_callback on all REST route parameters
• esc_html(), esc_attr(), esc_url() on all output
• API keys never exposed in REST responses or health check output
• Bulk operations capped at 10,000 posts
• Physical robots.txt managed via WP_Filesystem API
• Multisite guard on robots.txt sync
• flush_rewrite_rules() deferred to init hook
• Clean uninstall removes all options and post meta (opt-in, off by default)
• Duplicate-install guard — second copy bails out cleanly with an admin notice

SEO Plugins (read-only integration):

• Rank Math, Yoast SEO, AIOSEO, SEOPress (free + Pro), The SEO Framework, Slim SEO
• Auto-detects focus keywords, respects noindex, prevents schema duplication
• HowTo/ItemList schema skips injection when competing plugin's blocks exist

Page Builders (strips wrapper markup in markdown):

• Elementor, Divi, WPBakery, Beaver Builder, Gutenberg

Display Options:

• Gutenberg blocks (Summary + FAQ + Author Box) with full style controls and theme.json global font support
• Elementor widgets (Summary + FAQ + Author Box) with native Group_Control_Typography
• Auto-display above or below content

Cache Plugins (full purge + bypass support):

• WP Rocket, LiteSpeed Cache, W3 Total Cache, WP Super Cache, WP Fastest Cache, Cloudflare WP plugin, Nginx Helper, SG Optimizer, Breeze, Hummingbird, Cache Enabler, Comet Cache, Swift Performance, Autoptimize, Pantheon

CDNs (bypass headers on all markdown + llms.txt responses):

• Cloudflare (APO + non-APO), BunnyCDN, Varnish, Fastly, Akamai, nginx FastCGI

// Force RankReady's llms.txt even if another plugin handles it
add_filter( 'rankready_force_llms_txt', '__return_true' );

// Exclude specific posts from llms.txt
add_filter( 'rankready_exclude_from_llms', function( $exclude, $post ) {
    if ( $post->post_type === 'landing-page' ) return true;
    return $exclude;
}, 10, 2 );

// Hide the "View as Markdown" link
add_filter( 'rankready_show_md_link', '__return_false' );

// Disable schema injection for specific posts
add_filter( 'rankready_inject_schema', function( $inject, $post ) {
    if ( $post->ID === 123 ) return false;
    return $inject;
}, 10, 2 );

// Disable HowTo schema auto-detection
add_filter( 'rankready_inject_howto_schema', '__return_false' );

// Disable ItemList schema auto-detection
add_filter( 'rankready_inject_itemlist_schema', '__return_false' );

// Customize ItemList schema output
add_filter( 'rankready_itemlist_schema', function( $schema, $post ) {
    $schema['itemListOrder'] = 'https://schema.org/ItemListOrderDescending';
    return $schema;
}, 10, 2 );

Author Box integration points:

// Programmatically read the full Person schema for any user.
$person = RR_Author_Box::build_person_schema( $user_id );

// Render the author box HTML for any user + post combination.
echo RR_Author_Box::render_html(
    $user_id,
    array(
        'layout'         => 'card',   // card | compact | inline
        'showHeadshot'   => true,
        'showBio'        => true,
        'showCredentials'=> true,
        'showSocials'    => true,
        'showReviewed'   => true,
    ),
    $post_id
);

All profile fields are registered user meta with show_in_rest => true, so the block editor and headless consumers can read them via /wp/v2/users/{id} → meta.rr_author_*.

Full release history lives in CHANGELOG.md (Keep a Changelog format). Downloadable builds are published to GitHub Releases with the plugin zip attached to each release.

RankReady follows Semantic Versioning. During beta, releases are tagged v1.x.x-beta.N.

Version numbers live in three places and must stay in sync:

1. rankready.php — Version: header + RR_VERSION constant
2. readme.txt — Stable tag: line
3. CHANGELOG.md — add a new ## [X.Y.Z] - YYYY-MM-DD section under ## [Unreleased]

All beta releases are published to GitHub Releases with rankready.zip attached. Install that zip — don't use the auto-generated "Source code" archive (wrong folder name).

GPL-2.0-or-later. See LICENSE.