--- title: "RankReady privacy and third-party services" url: https://hostmy.blog/docs/rankready/privacy-and-third-party-services/ date: 2026-08-24 modified: 2026-08-25 lang: en author: "Aditya Sharma" description: "Every outbound connection RankReady can make, what it sends, when, and what never leaves your site." word_count: 837 --- # RankReady privacy and third-party services This page lists every external service RankReady can contact, exactly what each one receives, and what stays on your server no matter what. It mirrors the plugin's readme, so you can use it when completing your own privacy policy. RankReady is a free GPL-2.0 plugin from Host My Blog. Out of the box it makes no outbound calls at all. Every service below is either triggered by you or opt-in. ## Summary | Service | When it is contacted | What it receives | | ------- | -------------------- | ---------------- | | OpenAI, Anthropic Claude, Google Gemini, DeepSeek | Only when you click generate, and only for the one provider you configured | The content needed to produce a summary or FAQ, sent on your own API key | | DataForSEO | Optional. Only during FAQ generation, and only if you enabled it | The focus keyword only | | Freemius | Opt-in at activation. You can skip it | Environment and plugin usage data, listed in full below | ## AI providers RankReady supports four: **OpenAI**, **Anthropic Claude**, **Google Gemini** and **DeepSeek**. You bring your own key and paste it in Settings. There is no RankReady account, no proxy in the middle and no shared key. Three conditions all have to be true before a provider is contacted: - You pasted an API key. - You selected that provider. - You clicked generate on an AI Summary or an FAQ. Nothing is sent on a schedule, on page load, or on publish. If you never click generate, no provider ever hears from your site. Your keys are stored in your own site's `wp_options` table, encrypted at rest. They are never transmitted to Host My Blog. When a request is made it goes from your server straight to the provider you chose. Generation is unlimited. There are no monthly caps and no counters. The only cost is your own usage with your own provider, billed by them to you directly, on their pricing. One point to be clear about: whatever you send to a provider is then governed by that provider's terms and privacy policy, not by RankReady's. Read the policy of the provider you pick before generating summaries from content you consider sensitive. ### Features that need no key at all A key is needed **only** for AI Summaries and the FAQ Generator. Everything else runs entirely on your own server with no outbound call: - `/llms.txt` and `/llms-full.txt` - The Markdown endpoints - AI crawler controls and [Content Signals](https://hostmy.blog/docs/rankready/content-signals-robots-txt/) in robots.txt - [Article schema](https://hostmy.blog/docs/rankready/add-article-speakable-schema/) - The [Author Box](https://hostmy.blog/docs/rankready/how-to-add-eeat-author-box/) - AI referral tracking - The freshness scanner - The [WebMCP manifest](https://hostmy.blog/docs/rankready/how-to-add-webmcp-wordpress/) You can install RankReady, never add a key, and still use every one of those. ## DataForSEO DataForSEO is **optional**. It has one job in RankReady: the FAQ Generator uses it to find real [People Also Ask](https://hostmy.blog/docs/rankready/generate-faq-people-also-ask/) questions for a keyword, so the questions you publish are ones people actually search rather than ones a model invented. What it receives is narrow and worth stating precisely: **the focus keyword only**. Your article text is never sent to DataForSEO. Neither is your post title, your URL or your content body. Just the keyword string you typed. If you do not configure DataForSEO, it is never contacted, and the FAQ Generator still works using your AI provider alone. ## Freemius Version 1.3.0 includes the Freemius SDK for plugin usage data. It is **opt-in**. You are asked once, during activation, and you can skip it. Skipping takes you straight into the setup wizard and costs you no functionality. ### If you allow it, Freemius receives - Your site URL - Your WordPress version and PHP version - Your name and email address - Your list of active plugins and your active theme - Activation and deactivation events ### What Freemius never receives - Post content - Your AI provider API keys - Visitor data ### Changing your mind An **Opt Out** link appears next to RankReady on the Plugins page in wp-admin. Click it to stop sharing usage data. You do not need to deactivate or reinstall the plugin. ![The WordPress Plugins page showing the RankReady row where the Opt Out link appears](https://hostmy.blog/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/rr-plugins-list-v2-scaled.png)The Opt Out link sits with RankReady's other row actions on the Plugins page. ## What never leaves your site Regardless of which of the above you enable: - **Your API keys.** Stored encrypted in your own database. Sent only to the provider they belong to, when you trigger generation. - **Your visitors' data.** Crawler and referral information shown in Insights is recorded on your own site and stays there. It is not forwarded anywhere. - **Your post content.** The only exception is content you deliberately send to your chosen AI provider by clicking generate. It never goes to DataForSEO, never to Freemius and never to Host My Blog. ## Data you keep when you remove the plugin Deactivating RankReady removes nothing. Deleting it also removes nothing by default: your generated summaries, FAQs and settings survive. Removal is opt-in through the **Delete all data on uninstall** setting, option name `rnrd_delete_on_uninstall`, which is off unless you switch it on. Only with that setting on does uninstall clear RankReady's options, post meta, user meta and transients, drop the crawler log table, and remove the Cloudflare Cache Rule it created. If you want a clean removal, switch that setting on *before* you delete the plugin. Once it is deleted, the uninstall routine has already run.