A free WordPress plugin for monitoring recognised AI bot visits as they reach your website. Install and activate it, then open AI Bot Monitor in your dashboard. No API key or separate account is required.
Already have a log file, or can easily get one? Use the Log File Analyser instead. Server and edge logs can show traffic that never reaches WordPress.
What it tracks
Each matched request records the bot name, company, requested URL, response code, and timestamp. The dashboard includes a crawl heatmap, bot-type breakdown, comparisons with the previous period, response-code health, first-seen notices, and recommendations generated from your data.
The supplied v1.1.0 registry contains 98 entries: 72 AI-related patterns, including two opt-out tokens, plus 26 traditional search-crawler patterns. It covers platforms including OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Perplexity, xAI, Meta, Mistral, and DeepSeek. Counts refer to pattern entries, not verified unique crawlers.
Understand the bot types
- Assistant: labels such as ChatGPT-User, Claude-User, and Perplexity-User can indicate retrieval connected to a user request. Review which pages were fetched and whether they returned successfully.
- AI search: crawlers such as OAI-SearchBot, PerplexityBot, and Claude-SearchBot support search and retrieval systems.
- Training: labels such as GPTBot, ClaudeBot, and CCBot are grouped as training crawlers. A request alone does not establish how the content was subsequently used.
- Agent: patterns associated with automated activity on a user’s behalf, including ChatGPT Operator and Meta-ExternalAgent.
- Traditional search: recognised search crawlers such as Googlebot and bingbot, tracked separately from AI categories.
Opt-out tokens are different. Google-Extended and Applebot-Extended are robots.txt control tokens, not ordinary crawler identities. Their presence in the registry should not be interpreted as evidence that those tokens represent real bot visits.
Plugin or log file analysis?
For an agency managing dozens of WordPress sites across different hosts, consistent access to server logs can be difficult. This plugin offers a simple way to start ongoing monitoring without asking each client to configure log access.
It sees requests that reach WordPress and PHP. A server or edge access log can provide broader coverage at the layer where it is collected. Neither source necessarily contains every request across your entire delivery stack.
What the plugin can miss
- Cached responses: requests answered by a CDN, reverse proxy, or full-page cache before WordPress runs may not be recorded. This can affect assistant bots as well as systematic crawlers.
- Unknown user agents: matching is limited to the included patterns. New platforms and unusual labels require updates.
- Static assets: common image, stylesheet, JavaScript, and other asset requests are intentionally skipped.
- Ordinary browser identities: an agent using a standard Chrome or Edge user agent cannot reliably be distinguished from an ordinary browser by that string alone.
User-agent matching does not verify that a request really came from the named company. Assistant activity is a useful retrieval signal, but it is not proof of a citation, recommendation, booking, or a specific person’s question.
A practical workflow: use the plugin for ongoing monitoring, then periodically review server and edge logs on key properties to compare coverage and investigate gaps.
When it’s useful
- You want to see whether recognised AI crawlers request a hotel’s pages.
- You want to notice the first recorded assistant-crawler activity and investigate what was fetched.
- You manage multiple WordPress sites and need a consistent monitoring workflow.
- You want crawl records stored in each site’s own WordPress database.
When to use something else
For traffic served before WordPress runs, use the relevant server or edge logs. To learn what AI products are saying about a brand, use prompt testing: crawl monitoring measures requests, not the contents of AI answers.
Install and verify
- Download the ZIP below.
- In WordPress, go to Plugins → Add New → Upload Plugin.
- Select
hop-ai-bot-monitor-v1.1.0.zip, choose Install Now, then Activate. - Open AI Bot Monitor in the admin sidebar.
Download HOP AI Bot Monitor v1.1.0
To check logging on your own site, send a request with a test user agent:
curl -A "Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; ChatGPT-User/1.0)" https://yoursite.com/Replace the address with your website. If the request reaches WordPress, it should appear in the dashboard. A cache or security layer may prevent it from reaching PHP. This is a simulated request for testing; it is not evidence of a real ChatGPT visit.
Data and requirements
Crawl records are stored in your WordPress database, with CSV export and configurable retention. The plugin does not send crawl records to an external analytics API. Its dashboard currently loads a Google Fonts stylesheet, which creates a separate font request; the download is the original v1.1.0 ZIP.
The package declares WordPress 5.8 or later and PHP 7.4 or later. Its readme lists testing through WordPress 6.9. Check compatibility on a staging site when your setup differs.