AEOmatic — AI SEO, llms.txt & Schema Markup

Changelog

1.1.9

Renamed to AEOmatic — AI SEO, llms.txt & Schema Markup, plus a new site-level AI readiness score, a first-audit onboarding step, richer crawler analytics, and a set of correctness, security and performance fixes.

• New: site-wide AI Readiness score with three categories. A new AEOMATIC_Site_Readiness module aggregates what the plugin already measures into Technical readiness (direct checks on llms.txt, schema, organisation identity, permalinks, AI headers and duplicate-schema conflicts), Content readiness (mean of the per-post Content and Entities readiness categories across your 20 most recently modified published items) and AI crawler access (share of AI crawlers your robots.txt settings allow, with answer-time retrieval crawlers weighted separately from training crawlers). Every category declares whether it is a direct check or a heuristic, and the overall score is an unweighted mean with no-data categories excluded rather than counted as zero. Exposed at GET /wp-json/aeomatic/v1/readiness/site (manage_options).
• New: rebuilt dashboard as an AI Readiness dashboard. Overall score, three category cards each labelled « Direct check » or « Heuristic », issue count, top three recommendations with deep links, an « Improve my site » action, and an AI crawler activity table. Copy states explicitly that readiness is not visibility and that a crawler visit is not a citation.
• New: the setup wizard now runs a real audit. A sixth step between « AI crawlers » and « Verify » runs a fresh site readiness audit and shows the score, the category breakdown and the three highest-value fixes with links that open in a new tab. Onboarding now ends with the user knowing what to do next instead of only having filled in settings.
• New: AI crawler log records user agent and response status. Entries now carry the truncated user-agent string and the HTTP status the site returned, so a 404 or 403 being served to GPTBot is visible. The write is deferred to shutdown because the status code is not final earlier in the request. A new AEOMATIC_Crawler_Log::get_breakdown() returns per-bot visits, error counts, last-seen time and last URL. Still no IP addresses, cookies or visitor data.
• New: AI discovery headers are now a setting. AEOMATIC_Analyzer_Technical already read an ai_headers.enabled setting that was never declared, so the check silently always passed. The setting now exists, defaults to on for existing installs, and has a toggle in Settings. X-AI-Crawl now reports restricted instead of allowed when every AI crawler is blocked, rather than contradicting the site’s own robots.txt.

• Fix: page-builder and ACF pages are no longer scored as empty. This is the big one. Six readiness checks read $post->post_content directly instead of going through the shared content extractor, so on an Elementor, Divi, Bricks, Oxygen, Beaver Builder or WPBakery site — where the body lives in post meta — they saw a near-empty string and deducted points for content that was plainly there: Content lost 30 (no headings, no FAQ structure), Entities 25 (no named entities), Technical 20 (« body under 20 words »), Trust 25 (no outbound links) and Authority 20 (no authoritative outbound). All six now read the extractor, which merges post_content, page-builder data and ACF fields.

  The Technical analyzer’s message was the worst of it: it told page-builder users « content may be JS-only or hidden behind a page builder that AI crawlers cannot parse » — fired because they used a page builder, on content that server-renders perfectly well. Rewritten to describe what it now actually measures.

  Expect readiness scores to rise on page-builder sites after updating. That is the correction landing, not new optimisation.

• Fix: Elementor headings and links are now visible to the analysers. The Elementor extractor flattened everything to bare text, so a Heading widget lost its level entirely — settings.title became a plain line and settings.header_size (which holds h2) was being collected as content, injecting the literal string « h2 » into the extracted text. Heading widgets are now rebuilt as real <hN> markup, and widget links in settings.link.url are rebuilt as <a href> anchors so internal and outbound link counts can see them. Heading titles and button labels are emitted exactly once, not twice.
• Fix: the « generate meta description » quick-fix works on page-builder pages. It summarised post_content, so on a builder page it returned « Post has no content to summarise ». It now summarises extracted text.
• Fix: AEOMATIC_Content_Extractor::extract_text() now exists. The Content readiness analyzer called it behind a method_exists() guard and silently fell back to wp_strip_all_tags( $post->post_content ) — so page-builder and ACF content was scored as thin or empty. Same class of bug fixed for the Entity Scanner in 1.1.7; this was the remaining caller.
• Fix: AEOMATIC_LLMs_Txt::is_post_included() now exists. The Technical readiness analyzer called it behind a guard and fell back to a post-type check, so a post excluded from llms.txt by a disabled feature or a password was still scored as included.
• Fix: uninstall now removes everything. uninstall.php deleted 7 of the 16 post-meta keys the plugin writes and leaked the aeomatic_crawler_log_stats and aeomatic_wizard_completed options. It now clears all 9 options, 6 transients, the scheduled purge hook and all 16 meta keys — readiness, citation-gap and entity-scan results included.
• Fix: robots.txt no longer advertises llms.txt as a Sitemap:. The Sitemap: directive expects an XML sitemap or a plain list of URLs; llms.txt is Markdown, so conforming crawlers reported a malformed sitemap. It is now emitted as a comment. Discovery still works through the well-known path and the Link: rel="ai-context" header.
• Performance: /llms.txt and /llms-full.txt are now cached and bounded. Both were rebuilt from scratch on every anonymous request with nocache_headers() and posts_per_page => -1, so each GET walked every published post — and /llms-full.txt ran full page-builder extraction on all of them. Both bodies are now cached in a transient for one hour, flushed on publish, delete and menu changes, and served with Cache-Control: public, max-age=3600. /llms-full.txt is capped at 200 items per post type via the new aeomatic_llms_full_max_items filter and states in its own body when it truncated.
• Performance: running an audit no longer discards built schema. AEOMATIC_Schema::on_meta_changed() invalidated the schema cache on any post-meta write, including the plugin’s own readiness, citation-gap and entity-scan result keys — so every analysis run forced a schema rebuild on the next front-end request. Those keys are now in the skip list.
• Security: the per-post citation gaps endpoint is now gated per post. GET /citation-gaps/{id} checked the generic edit_posts capability, which let any contributor read the gap report for another author’s draft. It now checks edit_post for the requested ID, matching every other per-post route.
• Fix: the wizard’s verify step no longer shows unconditional checkmarks. Rows for llms.txt, AI discovery headers and Organization schema ticked green even when those features were switched off. They now reflect the actual setting.
• Renamed to « AEOmatic — AI SEO, llms.txt & Schema Markup ». The plugin name now carries the terms people actually search the plugin directory for, and the description leads with the mechanism (making content machine-readable, then reporting what crawlers got) rather than a promise about citations. Tag slots were re-spent on terms the name does not already cover.
• Docs: added README.md and rewrote readme.txt. New developer README covering the readiness-vs-visibility distinction, the full feature status table, the roadmap, security and performance notes, REST endpoints, all 11 filters, extension points, build tooling, and honest « compatibility testing required » markers. readme.txt drops unsupported claims (« get cited by… », « ChatGPT skips you and cites your competitors »), corrects the audit check count from 10 to 13, corrects installation instructions that told users to re-save permalinks when the plugin already flushes rewrites automatically, and adds a section listing what the plugin does not do.
• New: build tooling in bin/. build-plugin.js packages a release behind five gates — version consistency across all four release locations, a dev-file allow-list, the required aeomatic/ wrapper folder, forward-slash ZIP entry names, and passing static checks. check-structure.js and check-references.js stand in for php -l and catch dangling AEOMATIC_*:: calls; both self-test. Fixes two packaging defects: 1.1.8 shipped .claude/ and .vercel/ files into a public download, and an unwrapped archive would have installed as a second plugin folder instead of updating.

1.1.8

• Fix: SEO-plugin conflict warning no longer fires when Yoast or Rank Math has its schema module turned off. Previously the detector treated « plugin installed & active » as « plugin is emitting schema », so users who had disabled Rank Math’s Schema (Structured Data) module or set every CPT’s Yoast schema page/article type to « None » still saw the yellow « Schema conflict detected » banner. The detector now inspects each plugin’s own settings: Rank Math conflicts only report when rich-snippet is present in the rank_math_modules option; Yoast conflicts short-circuit to empty when its Schema Framework master switch (wpseo.enable_schema) is off, otherwise they are gated per-key on wpseo_titles — breadcrumb needs breadcrumbs-enable, article/author need at least one real schema-article-type-* value, and organization needs company_or_person set alongside at least one real schema-page-type-* value. Also adds a new aeomatic_seo_conflicts_detected filter so sites with unusual overrides can drop or adjust entries programmatically.
• New: conflict detector diagnostic panel in Settings. Under the « SEO plugin status » line there is now a collapsible « why is this warning firing? » section (admin-only) that dumps the exact wpseo_titles keys, rank_math_modules value, and computed conflict decision the detector used. Makes it possible to see at a glance which Yoast setting is still emitting schema without hand-inspecting the database. Warning banner also now includes the exact Yoast menu path required to actually disable Yoast schema (Search Appearance → Content Types → set Default Page type and Default Article type to None, plus disable breadcrumbs and clear « Company or person »), since Yoast has no single « disable schema » toggle.
• Fix: post-type checkboxes in Settings → Content coverage now persist for custom post types. 1.1.7 fixed the built-in post and page checkboxes by flushing the AEOMATIC_Post_Types in-memory map after a save, but CPTs from other plugins (WooCommerce, CPT UI, JetEngine, ACF, Pods, etc.) could still revert to unchecked after saving. Root cause was in AEOMATIC_Settings::sanitise() — it iterated only the raw get_post_types( public=>true ) list at admin_init time, and any CPT that either (a) was filtered into the plugin’s own supported-post-types list via aeomatic_supported_post_types_list but not registered as public=>true in core, or (b) registered on a hook that fires after admin_init, was silently dropped from the saved payload. The sanitiser now builds its slug list from three sources: the same filtered list the settings view renders, the raw public post types, and every slug submitted in $_POST — so no checkbox the user actually saw can be lost.
• Hardening: AEOMATIC_Settings::save() now also busts the WordPress options cache and repopulates its own request-level cache with the freshly-written array. Guards against persistent object caches (Redis, Memcached) returning the pre-save value on the remainder of the same request, and against any downstream reader seeing an intermediate null-cache state between update_option() and the next all() call.

1.1.7

• Fix: post-type checkboxes in Settings → Content coverage now persist their checked state after saving. The AEOMATIC_Post_Types in-memory map is populated on init (before the admin_init save handler runs) and was not being invalidated after a save, so the settings view re-rendered from a stale map and boxes appeared unchecked even though the DB was correct. AEOMATIC_Settings::save() now flushes the Post_Types cache immediately after update_option().
• Fix: Entity Scanner now sees ACF and page-builder content. The Signal Collector was calling a non-existent AEOMATIC_Content_Extractor::extract_text() method and silently falling back to wp_strip_all_tags( $post->post_content ) — so every text signal (keyword patterns, founding-date, NAP pattern) and every heading-based signal missed ACF fields, Elementor, Divi, Beaver, Bricks, Oxygen, and WPBakery content entirely. The collector now calls the real AEOMATIC_Content_Extractor::extract() API which merges all supported sources. ACF wysiwyg headings are now detected too.
• Fix: Entity Scanner respects the Organisation name / logo / sameAs set in Settings. The Signal Collector was reading org config from a non-existent organization settings section, so organization_setting('name') and organization_setting('logo') always returned empty strings — the Organization detector permanently reported « Organisation name is not set » and « Organisation logo not configured » even when both were filled in. It now reads from the correct schema.org_name / schema.org_logo / schema.org_sameas keys.
• Fix: Entity Scanner LocalBusiness detector accepts per-page address. The detector now also credits address / streetAddress / addressLocality set on the page’s LocalBusiness schema via the Schema Generator sidebar, not only site-wide address settings. Recommendation text updated to reflect both paths.
• Fix: Entity Scanner FAQ detection now covers ACF and every supported page builder. The FAQ signal only matched Gutenberg wp:aeomatic/faq block markers; it now also credits FAQs surfaced by the content extractor (ACF FAQ repeaters, Elementor / Divi / WPBakery accordions, shortcode Q&As, universal HTML detection).
• New: Entity Scanner recommendations now adapt to your editor. The Signal Collector exposes the detected editor / page builder (Gutenberg, Classic, Elementor, Divi, Beaver Builder, Bricks, Oxygen, WPBakery) to every detector. Recommendations that used to say « insert the AEOmatic FAQ block » or « in the Schema Generator sidebar » now emit builder-appropriate wording — an Elementor site is told to add a Toggle / Accordion widget; a Divi site is told to add a Toggle / Accordion module; ACF-only sites are told to use the aeomatic_schema_overrides filter. Signals themselves are unchanged; only the recommendation strings adapt.
• Improved: ACF FAQ detection now covers flexible_content layouts and nested containers. Previous behaviour only recognised Q&As inside a top-level ACF repeater. It now walks the full ACF field tree, so Q&As are also picked up from: flexible_content layouts whose sub-fields include « question » + « answer »; repeaters nested inside a flexible_content layout; repeaters nested inside a group; groups whose fields directly contain « question »/ »answer ». Detection is name-based — any field whose name contains question and another whose name contains answer qualifies, so common variants like faq_question / faq_answer / question_text / answer_text all work.

1.1.6

• New: Entity Scanner module. Scans every post across four sources (content, schema, headings, metadata) for six entity types — Organization, Person, Service, Product, LocalBusiness, FAQ — and returns a coverage score, list of missing entities, and per-entity recommendations to raise confidence. New AEOmatic → Entity Scanner admin page and Gutenberg sidebar panel. New REST endpoint GET /aeomatic/v1/entity-scan/{id}. Fingerprint-cached in post meta. Filter hook aeomatic_entity_detectors for custom detectors. Ships one reusable signal-collector service consumed by all six detectors — no code duplication with existing extraction.

1.1.5

• New: AI Readiness module. A second scoring lens complementing the existing AEO Audit. Every post is scored 0–100 across five explicit categories — Content, Trust, Authority, Entities, Technical — with a per-category list of issues plus recommendations so you know precisely which axis needs work. Overall score is the mean of the five categories.
• New: AEOmatic → AI Readiness admin page. Pick any published post from the recent-posts dropdown to run the analyzer on demand, or open a post via ?post={id}. « Recompute (skip cache) » button forces a fresh analysis.
• New: « AI Readiness » panel in the block-editor sidebar. Sits alongside the existing Schema, Audit, and Citation Gaps panels. Auto-loads on open, auto-refreshes after save, has its own recompute button.
• New REST endpoint: GET /aeomatic/v1/ai-readiness/{id}?force=false — returns { overall_score, categories[], fingerprint, cached }. Same auth model as /audit/{id} (edit_post capability check).
• Fingerprint-based caching in post meta _aeomatic_ai_readiness (payload) + _aeomatic_ai_readiness_fingerprint (invalidation key) + _aeomatic_ai_readiness_score (overall score, exposed via REST). Cache auto-invalidates on save_post.
• Analyzer registry is filterable via aeomatic_ai_readiness_analyzers so third-party code can add or replace categories without patching core.
• Zero duplication: reuses AEOMATIC_Content_Extractor, AEOMATIC_Schema_Analyzer, AEOMATIC_Schema_Generator, AEOMATIC_LLMs_Txt, AEOMATIC_Post_Types, and AEOMATIC_Settings.

1.1.4

• New: Setup Wizard. Five-step guided onboarding runs automatically on activation. Auto-imports your organisation name, logo, and social profiles from Yoast SEO, Rank Math, SEOPress, All in One SEO, or The SEO Framework — never overwrites values you already set in AEOmatic. Live JSON-LD preview updates as you type. Fully offline; no accounts, no external calls. Re-runnable any time from the Plugins list.
• New: WordPress dashboard widget « AEO Readiness ». A compact tile on the native wp-admin dashboard showing average AEO score, count of posts with citation gaps, top three AI-bot visitors with a mini bar chart, and log-retention health. Colour-coded score chip so status reads at a glance.
• New: Bulk audit action on Posts/Pages/CPT list screens. Select any rows, choose « AEOmatic — refresh audit & gaps, » and recompute audit scores and citation gaps for all selected posts in one pass. Results appear in a dismissible admin notice with average scores, total gaps flagged, and an expandable per-post table. Safety cap of 50 posts per batch. Everything runs on your own server.
• New: Hybrid crawler-log retention. The AI bot visit log now uses a daily WP-Cron purge (default 90-day retention, configurable 7–365 days from AEOmatic → Settings → Crawler visit log) plus a 500-entry safety ceiling, replacing the previous fixed 200-entry cap. The new Settings section also shows live log status: entries kept, age of the oldest row, and the last purge outcome.
• New AI crawlers recognised: DuckAssistBot (DuckDuckGo AI) and Meta-ExternalFetcher (Meta’s per-user fetcher, distinct from the training UA meta-externalagent). Both added to detection and to the default allow-list. Total recognised: 20 AI user agents.
• Refactor: extracted AEOMATIC_Audit::site_summary() and AEOMATIC_Citation_Gaps::site_summary() as reusable public entry points so the dashboard widget, bulk-action notice, and REST endpoints all share one code path.

1.1.3

• New: Ask AI — « Am I cited? » panel. A new block-editor sidebar panel with four one-click buttons — Ask ChatGPT, Ask Perplexity, Ask Google AI, Ask Claude. Each button opens the AI engine in a new tab with your post title pre-filled as the question, so you can see with your own eyes whether your site is quoted in the AI’s answer. No API keys, no accounts, no external calls from your server — the plugin only builds the link; your browser does the rest. Turns « did my AEO work? » from a guess into a 5-second test.
• New: AI Citation Gaps. Sixteen local, rules-based checks that flag exactly why a page is unlikely to be cited by AI engines and what to change. Runs entirely on your own server — no external calls, no keys, no account.
• Five internal-coverage rules: orphan pages, low internal-link count, sibling-topic gaps by category, thin body for depth-heavy schema types, and missing « related reading » hooks.
• Eleven answer-shape rules: no direct opening answer, no question-style headings, missing FAQ block, FAQ content without FAQPage schema, HowTo content without HowTo schema, low-confidence schema type match, low image alt-text coverage, no citation hook (list/table/bold summary) near the top, missing author signal, missing meta description, and posts missing from the emitted /llms.txt.
• New AEOmatic → Citation Gaps admin subpage with a filterable, paginated table across all posts and pages, plus a scanner-style summary strip (pages scanned / with gaps / clean / average score). Sorts worst-scoring first so you can triage. Filters: title search, post type, author, severity, gap type, score range, modified date range.
• New AI Citation Gaps panel in the block editor sidebar — shows the top high/medium gaps for the open post with a one-line fix hint each and a one-click quick-fix button where a structural fix is possible. Available on every enabled post type (posts, pages, WooCommerce products, and any registered public CPT).
• Fingerprint-based caching on post save — results persist in post meta and only rebuild when content, title, or schema type changes.
• Filter hook aeomatic_citation_gap_results so power users can register their own rules.

1.1.2

• AI crawler list updated to match Anthropic’s current published user agents. Added Claude-User (Anthropic’s user-triggered live-fetch UA, equivalent to ChatGPT-User) to the default allow-list and audit detection. Removed deprecated Claude-Web and anthropic-ai from the default allow-list for new installs; they remain recognised by the visit log for backward compatibility. Source: Anthropic crawler documentation.
• Existing installations do not need to re-flush permalinks.

1.1.1

• Documentation: updated readme with clearer feature breakdown, AI engines supported, and comparison guidance.
• No code changes. Existing installations do not need to re-flush permalinks.

1.1.0

• llms.txt now includes all published pages and posts (previously capped at 25 most recent per type; pages were skipped if not in the primary nav menu).
• New dedicated ## Pages section in llms.txt — lists every published page (parent and child), ordered by menu_order then title.
• New /llms-full.txt virtual endpoint — emits the full markdown body of every included page and post, designed for direct LLM ingestion. Advertised from llms.txt via a Full content: line.
• New activity counter llms_full_serves records hits to the new endpoint.
• Settings copy updated to reflect the new behaviour.
• Upgrade step: after updating, go to Settings → Permalinks → Save Changes once to register the new /llms-full.txt rewrite rule.

1.0.0

• Initial public release.
• Visual schema editor in Gutenberg sidebar — auto-populates all fields from page content, every field editable.
• Intelligent schema type detection — 6 scoring rules, 22 supported schema types.
• Type-specific property extraction — Recipe ingredients/instructions, JobPosting salary, Event dates, LocalBusiness address/hours.
• Support for Gutenberg, Classic Editor, Elementor, Divi, Beaver Builder, Bricks, Oxygen, WPBakery, ACF.
• WooCommerce Product schema with price, availability, SKU, ratings (auto-filled, all editable).
• WebSite schema with SearchAction on homepage — enables Google sitelinks search box.
• VideoObject schema — auto-detected from YouTube and Vimeo embeds in post content.
• Speakable schema (WebPage + SpeakableSpecification) on all singular pages for voice AI.
• AI discovery HTTP headers (X-AI-Crawl, X-AI-Citeable, X-Content-License, X-AI-Content-Type, X-AI-Speakable) emitted automatically on all public pages.
• AI crawler visit log — records last 200 AI bot visits, viewable in admin under « What did we do? ».
• llms.txt virtual endpoint following the llmstxt.org specification, with spec-compliant Ignore section.
• AI crawler control via robots.txt (GPTBot, ClaudeBot, Claude-SearchBot, PerplexityBot, Google-Extended, DeepSeekBot, Cohere-AI and more).
• AEO content audit engine — 10-criteria scoring with actionable suggestions in the editor sidebar.
• FAQ Gutenberg block with automatic FAQPage schema generation.
• SEO plugin conflict detection (Yoast, Rank Math, AIOSEO, SEOPress, The SEO Framework).
• One-click conflict resolution — disables duplicate schema types only.
• Live verification panel — proves every feature is working with clickable links.
• Schema cache with content fingerprinting — regenerates automatically on content changes.
• Request-level settings cache — single DB read per page load.
• Deferred activity counter writes — no DB writes on front-end page views.
• All public custom post types auto-detected and supported.