● Answer engine optimization for WordPress

See who's really reading your WordPress site

ChatGPT, Claude, and Perplexity crawl your content every day - and your analytics can't see a single one of them. Viz shows you every AI visit, lets you decide which bots get access, and tracks whether AI answers actually mention you. Measurement to control to visibility - the full AEO loop, inside wp-admin.

Free forever plan · Installs in 2 minutes · No credit card

yoursite.com/wp-admin · Viz
Total requests
128,402
AI bots
37.4%
Humans
41.1%
Search
GPTBotClaudeBotPerplexityBotGooglebotBingbotOAI-SearchBotChatGPT-UserGoogle-ExtendedAmazonbotApplebotBytespiderCCBotMeta-ExternalAgentDuckAssistBot

The AI economy is reading your site. You just can't see it.

By most public estimates, automated traffic now rivals human traffic on content sites - and AI crawlers are its fastest-growing slice. Every JavaScript tracker is structurally blind to all of it. That isn't a bug in your analytics; it's the design.

Where you measure decides what you see

Three ways to count traffic. Only one sees the whole picture.

The measurement point - browser, log file, or application server - determines which visitors exist in your data at all.

JavaScript trackers

GA4, Plausible, Fathom…

Run in the browser, so they only count visitors who execute your scripts. Crawlers never do. Result: your biggest new traffic source scores a flat zero, and bot-inflated "direct" visits muddy what remains.

Blind to bots

Raw server logs

Access logs, AWStats…

See everything, understand nothing. Every hit is a text line with no classification, no dashboards, and - on managed WordPress hosting - often no access at all. Parsing them into answers is a weekend project that never ships.

Data without answers

Viz

Inside WordPress itself

Hooks the request inside WordPress after your CDN and cache have done their job, classifies it on the spot, and stores it in your own database - so "how much of my traffic is AI?" is a chart, not a grep.

Sees and explains

How it works

Live in two minutes. Insightful from the first hit.

1

Install the plugin

Drop Viz into WordPress, activate, and connect your free account. It hooks every request that reaches your server and adds a couple of milliseconds you'll never feel.

2

Every visit gets classified

Every request is identified and sorted into 8 clear categories - human, AI, search, or bot. More than 60 named bots are recognized out of the box.

3

Watch your real traffic mix

A clean dashboard right inside wp-admin: charts, top bots, and a searchable log of every request.

The full picture

Eight categories. No more lumping bots into “direct.”

Viz doesn't just flag “a bot.” It tells you whether an AI is training on you, answering a live question, or acting on someone's behalf - because those three deserve very different responses from you.

🧑
Human browser
Real people on your site
Chrome, Safari
🤖
AI training crawler
Scraping to train models
GPTBot, ClaudeBot
🔍
AI search bot
Answering live AI queries
PerplexityBot
💬
AI user agent
AI acting for a person
ChatGPT-User
⚙️
AI autonomous agent
Self-directed AI
Agent frameworks
🕷️
Search engine crawler
Classic SEO indexing
Googlebot, Bingbot
📦
Traditional bot
Uptime, scrapers, feeds
curl, monitors
Unknown
Everything unclassified
-
Browse the bot directory →
The AEO loop

Answer engine optimization is a loop, not a report.

Being the answer in ChatGPT or Perplexity isn't a one-time audit. It's a cycle you run: measure who reads you, control what they may take, and verify how you show up in the answers.

1

Measure the machines

Server-level analytics shows which AI engines read you, which pages they pull, and how often. That crawl map is the raw material of AEO - you can't optimize for engines you can't see.

2

Control the access

Not every bot deserves your archive. Allow the engines that cite you, block the ones that only take - with robots.txt rules, server-level 403s, and a probe that verifies blocks hold.

3

Win the answers

AI Visibility asks the engines your buyers' questions and tracks whether you're mentioned, cited, and how you compare to competitors - so you can fix the gaps and watch your share of answers move.

Why the split matters

Training, retrieval, and referral are three different economies.

Training crawls take, once

A training crawler reads your archive to improve a model. It may never come back, and it sends you nothing. If your content is your product, this is the traffic you may want to meter or block - and you can only negotiate with what you can measure.

Retrieval crawls answer questions

AI search bots fetch your pages to answer a live user query. Some of those answers cite you and send readers; many don't. Watching which pages retrieval bots hit tells you what AI engines think you're an authority on.

Referrals are the new SEO

When ChatGPT or Perplexity links you and a human clicks through, that visitor behaves differently - often high-intent, often bypassing your homepage. Viz ties GA4 sessions back to AI sources so you can see whether being crawled ever pays you back.

Why Viz

Built for the server. Tuned for speed. Honest about your traffic.

Zero slowdown

The whole pipeline adds about 2ms per request - a rounding error next to a normal page render. Your visitors never wait, and never know it's there.

🧠

60+ bots recognized

OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Perplexity, Common Crawl, and more - kept current so new crawlers show up the day they start knocking.

🔒

Your data, your server

No external JavaScript. No ad-tech. Everything lands in your own database first. You decide what to keep and for how long.

🚦

Block the bots you don't want

Viz doesn't just watch. AI Control blocks chosen AI bots with layered robots.txt rules and server-level 403s - and a built-in probe verifies the block is actually holding.

📣

Know what AI says about you

Paid plans track how ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Perplexity answer your buyers' questions - whether you're mentioned, cited, and how you compare to competitors.

🔗

Connect Google Analytics

Link GA4 and Search Console to see the human visitors AI assistants send you - sessions, engagement, and conversions from ChatGPT, Perplexity, and friends.

See all features →
Questions

Straight answers about bot analytics.

Why can't Google Analytics see AI bots?

GA4 counts a visit when the browser executes its JavaScript tag. Crawlers like GPTBot and ClaudeBot fetch your HTML and leave - they never run scripts, so they never appear in GA4 at all. The only place they are visible is at the server, which is where Viz measures.

How does Viz tell an AI bot from a human?

The major AI operators publicly identify their crawlers - OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, and Perplexity all publish their bot names - and Viz keeps an up-to-date catalog of more than 60 of them. Every request gets sorted into one of eight categories, and anything Viz can't identify with confidence stays visible in an explicit Unknown bucket rather than being silently dropped.

Does logging every request slow my site down?

The full pipeline adds about 2 milliseconds to a request. For comparison, a typical WordPress page render is measured in hundreds of milliseconds. No external services are called during the request.

Can I block AI bots without breaking my SEO?

Yes - that distinction is the whole point of classification. Viz separates AI training crawlers (GPTBot, ClaudeBot, CCBot) from search engine crawlers (Googlebot, Bingbot), so you can serve 403s to the former while the latter keep indexing you normally. A built-in probe then verifies the block is actually holding.

Is my visitor data sent anywhere?

Requests are logged to your own WordPress database first - there is no external JavaScript and no ad-tech. You control retention. Paid cloud features only sync the aggregate stats needed to power them.

Start measuring

Your content is already feeding the AI economy. Start measuring it.