Blocking GPTBot also blocks
the answer that would have
linked to you.
The usual advice on AI crawlers is a switch with two positions. Content Signals is the third: a line in your robots.txt separating what a crawler may do with your content from whether it may fetch it. RankReady writes that line, keeps it consistent with your crawler rules, and removes it cleanly if you change your mind. About five minutes.
v1.3.1 · 300 active installs · Tested to WordPress 7.1 · Runs alongside Yoast, Rank Math, AIOSEO and SEOPress
The useful part is that
they come apart.
The contentsignals.org convention defines three separate permissions. Plenty of publishers have said no to search by accident while trying to say no to training.
ai-train
May this content be used to train or fine-tune a model. This is the one most publishers actually object to, because the content is absorbed and the source disappears.
search
May this content appear in a search index, with a link back. Almost nobody wants to say no to this.
ai-input
May this content be retrieved live and used to build an answer, which is the mode where a link back is still possible.
One managed block,
and your file left alone.
Everything between the BEGIN and END markers is managed. Everything outside it is yours and is never touched.
A single Content-Signal line
Written from your three answers, so the file states your position in the form publishers are now expected to use.
Removed cleanly when you turn it off
Including copies stranded by an earlier version, so you do not accumulate contradictory signals over time. That cleanup exists because an earlier release did strand them.
Googlebot keeps its own mirrored group
robots.txt matching is most specific wins, not additive. Naming Googlebot inside a permissive AI group would silently detach it from your wildcard rules and hand it your admin-ajax and search pages.
Your brand names as a comment
Comments cost nothing and are read by anything fetching the file whole, so the canonical names you set once appear here too.
Works with a virtual robots.txt
WordPress serves one and RankReady writes into it. A real file on disk takes precedence, which is a common reason a change appears to do nothing.
Consistent with your crawler rules
The signals and the per crawler allow and block rules are written from the same screen, so the file cannot contradict itself.
A signal is a request,
not a fence.
This section is the reason to read this page rather than a competitor's.
It is not enforced by anything
ai-train=no is a statement of terms. A crawler that ignores it faces no technical obstacle. If your intent is to physically stop a crawler, the tool is a Disallow rule or a block at the edge.
Adoption is early and we will not dress it up
The convention comes out of Cloudflare's work on crawler permissions. Per vendor compliance is not something a WordPress plugin can verify, and no figure is published here that we have not measured.
It does not change what already happened
Content published years ago and already crawled is already crawled. Signals apply going forward.
It is not a legal instrument
Stating terms in a machine readable place is a reasonable thing to do. Whether it carries weight anywhere is a question for a lawyer, not a plugin.
The honest answers,
before you have to ask.
Q. Does ai-train=no stop OpenAI training on my posts?
It states that you do not consent. It does not physically prevent it. For a hard block, disallow the crawler by name, which is a different switch and one RankReady also gives you.
Q. Will saying no to training hurt me in ChatGPT or Perplexity answers?
Training and answering are different permissions, which is the whole reason the convention splits them. No to ai-train while leaving ai-input and search as yes is where most publishers land.
Q. Will this overwrite my existing robots.txt?
No. RankReady manages only the text between its own markers. Everything else stays exactly as you wrote it, including rules from Yoast, Rank Math, AIOSEO or SEOPress.
Q. What happens if I turn it off later?
The fragment is removed, and so are orphaned copies left behind by earlier versions. Stranded signals contradicting each other are worse than none.
Q. Do I need a physical robots.txt file?
No. WordPress serves a virtual one and RankReady writes into it. If a real file exists on disk it takes precedence, which is a common reason changes appear to do nothing.
Q. How long does setup take?
About five minutes. Enable Content Signals under AI Visibility, set the three values, save.
Make your site readable
to the things reading it.
RankReady is a WordPress AI SEO plugin. It runs alongside Yoast, Rank Math, AIOSEO and SEOPress rather than replacing any of them, and setup takes about five minutes from your dashboard.
Free, no account, no credit card · GPL-2.0 · About five minutes from your dashboard