FAQ
Frequently Asked Questions
The questions we're asked most, answered straight
Getting Started
Do I need an account?
No. Every SEO tool runs on your own server with nothing connected. An account is what lets our website AEOSearch.io measure you: the free report, the daily readiness check (what the engines need before they can read your site), the fixes it proposes, and the reports you can buy.
Is the first report really free?
Yes. Connect a free account, describe your business and up to four rivals (or press Fill From My Site), read the four questions, and press Start. ChatGPT and Gemini answer each one. You see whether they named you, whom they named instead, and the answer word for word on up to three questions a rival won. Once per site, no card, no sales call.
Does AI name my business?
That is the question the report answers, and the plugin never guesses at it. The free report asks ChatGPT and Gemini; a paid report adds Claude, Grok and Perplexity, asks 20, 50 or 100 questions, and shows every answer. No plugin can make an engine name you. This one shows what each engine said today, and the readiness check lists what a model can and cannot read on your site.
Can I keep Yoast or Rank Math?
Yes, and nothing doubles up. While either one is active, this plugin writes no second title tag, description, canonical, JSON-LD block or sitemap beside theirs until you hand that job over on the Integrations screen. When you do move, the importers carry your titles, descriptions and social cards across, so nothing is retyped.
Does this plugin change my site?
Your page heads, yes, from activation: the title tag, the meta description and the social card tags, each one switched off under Modules. Your content, no, unless you confirm one fix at a time. A fix shows its exact content first, and one click puts it back. No fix touches a theme file or your posts; only the robots.txt and .htaccess editors write a file, each after a backup.
Does it work on multisite?
Yes. Every setting, key, log and role grant is stored per site — connecting one site never connects another — and uninstalling cleans up every site in the network.
What happens if I uninstall the plugin?
It removes every setting, log, role grant and scheduled task it created. Two things stay on purpose: the lines it wrote into .htaccess and robots.txt at your request, and the backups it took before each of those writes, so a change can still be put back. Revert those fixes first if you want the lines gone too.
Privacy & Data
Does lead capture change my forms?
No. The plugin waits for your form plugin to say a submission finished — it never modifies a form, a field, or what a visitor sees.
What does IndexNow send, and to whom?
Your hostname, the generated key, the key-file address and the URLs you submit — to the IndexNow endpoint at api.indexnow.org, never to AEOSearch.
Is IndexNow on by default?
No. Three switches have to be on before anything leaves: the module itself, outbound consent plus acknowledgment, and a served key file.
What does a field-suggestion click send?
That page's title, the first 1,500 characters of its text, up to 20 of its headings and the tone you picked, relayed by AEOSearch to Google, whose language model writes the options.
Features & Fixes
Where do the numbers come from?
From our website AEOSearch.io, which measures every readiness count; the plugin shows each one as it arrived and scores none of them. A check that could not be measured says so and stays out of the pass and fail counts. The writing check in your editor is the exception: it runs on your own server.
Can auto-apply make a change I can't undo?
No. What was there is saved before anything changes, and the change doesn't happen if that save fails. Every auto-apply is logged and comes back off with one click.
Does the plugin work with WooCommerce?
Yes — an optional module reads your store's live price and availability into product schema, never a saved copy.
Which AI engines does the free report ask?
ChatGPT and Gemini 3.8 Flash, once per question. A paid report adds Claude, Grok and Perplexity, and you choose the model on each.
Nothing Leaves Without You
Not one request leaves until you say so
This isn't a privacy policy written to be skimmed past. It's every request this plugin can make outside your server: what's in it, when it fires, and the switch that keeps it off. If a row here says off, nothing travels until you turn it on.
| Feature | Sends | When | Default |
|---|---|---|---|
| Readiness audit | your public site hostname | after you save a site key and tick consent, then once daily | off until connected |
| Per-post analysis | a published URL you choose, or a draft's title and text on request | on your click, or on publish if you turn that setting on | off (auto-after-publish off) |
| Field suggestions | the page title, first 1,500 characters, up to 20 headings and the tone you picked — relayed to Google | on each Suggest click | on-click only |
| Page drafts | the one sentence you type about an empty page, with its title — relayed to Google | on the Draft the page click | on-click only |
| Help box and Ask Your Report | the question you type — relayed to Anthropic, which answers Ask Your Report from your stored report | on each question you send | on-click only |
| Free report and paid reports | brand, category, customer description, alias and competitor names you typed | on the click that starts a report | on-click only |
| Lead forwarding | the submitter's email, name, page URL and form ID | on each form submission, once turned on | off |
| Safe-kind auto-apply | only the request for the fix proposed for your site | during the daily re-check, per kind you enabled | off, per kind |
| AI-crawler observatory (collector) | page path and crawler label, to a collector URL you supply | once daily, batched | off |
| Observatory dashboard share | per-day crawler hit counts only, never paths | once daily | off |
| IndexNow | your hostname, a generated key, the key-file address, and the URLs you submit — to api.indexnow.org, not AEOSearch | on manual submit, or on publish once auto-submit is armed | off (three switches required) |
| Structured-data import | nothing of yours — it reads the one page address you paste | on the Import click only | manual only |
| Google Analytics tag | visitor page views, to the GA4 property you name | on every public page view, once a Measurement ID is saved | off while the field is empty |
| Buying | what you picked and the wp-admin address to come back to; your card goes to Stripe, never to AEOSearch | on a button that buys a plan or a report | on-click only |
| Other one-click sends | one thing each: a keyword you track, your approval of a report's business profile, or the address of a page you fixed | on that click | on-click only |
| Off-site link check | a request to each site one post links to, with nothing of yours attached | on Check the Off-site Links, one post at a time | manual only |
| Earlier versions | a request to wordpress.org for this plugin's past releases | on Look Up Earlier Versions | manual only |
Source: readme.txt, "External services", plugin 1.49.1. Installing or activating sends nothing.
Install Free, Decide Later
Install free today and read your first answer