WordPress plugin

What the plugin does#

Rankfinity Connector is a free WordPress plugin. The current version is 1.6.1. It does six jobs:

1. SEO fields. It lets Agent to WordPress read and write the SEO fields of the active SEO plugin — Yoast SEO, Rank Math or All in One SEO: SEO title, meta description, focus keyword, canonical address, noindex, and the Open Graph title, description and image. It also lets the Content writer set the meta description in Yoast SEO or Rank Math when it publishes. Without the plugin, WordPress does not accept those fields from outside, and the Content writer can only use the post excerpt.
2. Site files and sitemap. Page schema (JSON-LD, printed in the page head), the text of llms.txt and of WordPress's robots.txt, the sitemap, and — only if you turn them on — IndexNow and an llms.txt rebuild every time something is published.
3. Redirects. Adds and removes 301/302 redirects for Agent to WordPress.
4. Live bot visits. It records when search and AI bots open your pages — Googlebot, Bingbot, GPTBot, OAI-SearchBot, ClaudeBot and PerplexityBot — checks whether each visit is genuine, and sends the list to Rankfinity every 5 minutes. You see the visits in Site audit › Indexing.

1. Knows your site, so you do not have to. It tells Rankfinity which SEO plugin, page builder, cache plugin and theme you use, which WordPress and PHP version you run, and whether permalinks or multisite will get in the way. Agent to WordPress shows it as We found: Yoast SEO, Elementor, WP Rocket next to "Connected", and warns you in one sentence if something needs a fix. Pages built with Elementor, Divi, Bricks, Beaver Builder, Oxygen or WPBakery are recognised: the agent changes their SEO fields, schema, redirects and menus, but not their text (it would not show on the page, or could break it). After every applied change and every undo, the plugin clears the cache of that one page in WP Rocket, LiteSpeed Cache, W3 Total Cache, WP Super Cache, WP Fastest Cache and SG Optimizer; it never clears the whole cache. If you use a CDN such as Cloudflare, the agent tells you to clear it there.

1. Forms and WooCommerce texts (1.6.0). It lets Agent to WordPress change field labels, placeholders, the required flag, the submit button text, the confirmation message and the notification recipient of Contact Form 7, WPForms and Gravity Forms forms, and the title, descriptions, image alt text, SEO title/description and category descriptions of WooCommerce products. Each route accepts a short fixed list of fields only: form logic, conditions, integrations, API keys, payments, prices, stock, SKU, orders, customers and coupons cannot be read or written through it, and it writes no files or free-form settings. Forms need an administrator; products and categories an administrator or shop manager.

It also gives you a pairing code, a fallback way to connect Agent to WordPress (see below).

The plugin has no other dependencies and costs nothing.

Setting up with no copying#

1. Install the plugin once (below) and activate it.
2. In WordPress open Rankfinity (main menu) and press Connect to Rankfinity. Rankfinity opens (log in if asked).
3. Pick the project the site belongs to and press Connect this site.
4. WordPress opens again: press Approve once. You land back in Rankfinity, connected. No code, link or password to copy.

The button creates the same one-time code as the manual way (works once, 30 minutes), and Approve is still the only thing that creates the password. Only the administrator who pressed the button can approve, and the return trip goes only to the Rankfinity address set in the plugin.

Installing#

1. In Rankfinity open Settings › Project › Advanced settings › Integrations › WordPress plugin and click Download plugin (.zip). The same file is linked from the Connect with WordPress window in Agent to WordPress.
2. In WordPress go to Plugins › Add New › Upload Plugin, choose the zip and click Install Now, then Activate.

Updates#

From 1.5.0 the plugin updates itself from WordPress: it checks Rankfinity twice a day, the new version shows up under Plugins like any update, and it installs automatically once the build carries Rankfinity's signing key (until then you update from Plugins yourself). Before installing, WordPress checks the package against a checksum published by Rankfinity (and a signature once one is configured); a package that does not match is not installed. Switch automatic updates off, or check now, in Rankfinity (main menu) › Updates.

Updating from an older version#

Versions before 1.5.0 do not update themselves: download the zip again and upload it the same way. WordPress asks whether to replace the installed version — choose Replace current with uploaded. Your key and settings stay. After the update, Rankfinity (main menu) in WordPress says which SEO plugin it found, and Agent to WordPress shows the plugin version next to "Connected".

Version 1.4.0 adds the site read-out, the page-builder protection and the page cache clearing; the agent still works with 1.3.0 but cannot see your setup, and Agent to WordPress shows Update available when a newer plugin is waiting. Version 1.3.0 is needed for the focus keyword, canonical, noindex and social fields, for All in One SEO, for the sitemap and publishing automation, for redirects and for the llms.txt built from your pages. With version 1.1 or 1.2 the SEO title, description, schema, llms.txt and robots.txt still work; the agent says when a change needs 1.3.0.

Nothing to configure#

You should not need to know your hosting setup. Connect once — Rankfinity checks the address, tells you in plain words if something blocks it and how to fix it (a firewall, plain permalinks, application passwords turned off, a host that removes the login header) — and then the plugin tells Rankfinity what your site uses. Rankfinity (main menu) in WordPress lists what was detected. Changes are always a preview first, applied only after your yes, and undo is free. If you edit a page, an SEO field, a file or a menu by hand after the agent changed it, Undo asks before it replaces your edit.

Single site only. On a WordPress multisite network Rankfinity does not change anything: the plugin refuses every write and says why. Connect a normal single-site install.

SEOPress is supported for the SEO title and description. Its other fields (focus keyword, canonical, noindex, social) are changed in SEOPress itself.

Pause and see what changed#

Rankfinity (main menu) › Agent access has Pause Agent access: while paused, every change from Rankfinity is refused (reading still works) until you press Resume. Below it the last 10 changes Rankfinity made (what, which page, applied or undone) are listed; Rankfinity only adds to that list, it cannot change the pause.

Text in page builders#

Beyond normal text changes, the agent can change only the wording of a page, with a preview and Undo, keeping the layout:

• Gutenberg (the WordPress editor): paragraphs, headings, list items, buttons and quotes. On by default; the owner of the Rankfinity installation can switch it off. Other blocks (columns, query loops, custom HTML) are never touched.
• Elementor: heading, text editor and button widgets. Switched off until it has been tested on a live site; then the plugin edits only those fields and rebuilds the page's Elementor CSS.
• Divi (version 4 shortcodes): text modules and the title and button text of call-to-action, blurb, button, header, slide and pricing modules. Switched off until tested on a live site; the page's Divi static CSS is cleared after a change. Divi 5 layouts are not supported yet.

When a text edit is switched off, the agent explains that and still changes SEO fields, schema, redirects and menus.

Image alt text#

Besides alt text inside a page, the agent can add alt text to images in the Media Library (up to 30 at a time, only where it is empty unless you ask to overwrite), with a preview and Undo.

Connecting Agent to WordPress with a pairing code#

The usual way to connect is Connect with WordPress in Rankfinity, where you approve the connection in WordPress (Agent to WordPress). If that does not work on your host:

1. In WordPress open Rankfinity (main menu) and press Create pairing code. It shows a Site link and a Pairing code, which works once, for 30 minutes.
2. In Rankfinity, in the Connect window, open Or use a pairing code from the plugin, paste both and press Connect with the code.
3. Back in WordPress, press Approve (or Reject). The screen shows which project asked and when. Approving creates an application password for your user, and WordPress gives it all the permissions of your account, so approve only a request you started yourself. Remove it any time with Remove Agent access in Rankfinity (main menu) (Disconnect and deleting the plugin remove it too) or in Users › Profile › Application Passwords. Rankfinity updates by itself.

Connecting bot visits with a key#

Bot visits use their own key, separate from the Agent to WordPress connection.

1. In Rankfinity, click Create key in the WordPress plugin card.
2. Copy the key. It is shown once and never again.
3. In WordPress open Rankfinity (main menu), paste the key into Connection key and click Save.
4. Click Test connection. A success message means the site and the project are linked.

Send queued visits now sends queued visits immediately instead of waiting for the next 5-minute cycle. Disconnect removes the key from WordPress.

Lost the key? Click New key in Rankfinity and paste the new one. The old key stops working immediately. Remove key disconnects the site; visits already received stay until they expire.

SEO fields#

The plugin works with the active SEO plugin, checked in this order: Yoast SEO, Rank Math, All in One SEO. Each field goes where that plugin keeps it (All in One SEO keeps them in its own table, not in post meta), only for posts and pages, and only for a user who may edit that post.

Agent to WordPress can set every field above in all three SEO plugins. Publishing from the Content writer fills the meta description in Yoast SEO or Rank Math; with All in One SEO, or with no SEO plugin, the Content writer saves the description as the excerpt and tells you so — set it afterwards with Agent to WordPress. With no SEO plugin active, Agent to WordPress writes no SEO fields and says why.

Sitemap, robots.txt, llms.txt and IndexNow#

These settings are for administrators and are all off until you turn them on from Rankfinity — ask Agent to WordPress to "set up the sitemap":

• Find the sitemap — Yoast SEO and Rank Math at /sitemap_index.xml, All in One SEO at /sitemap.xml, WordPress core at /wp-sitemap.xml.
• Turn on the WordPress core sitemap when no SEO plugin provides one.
• Add a Sitemap: line to the robots.txt that WordPress serves.
• IndexNow on publish — every time a post or page is published, its address is sent to IndexNow. The plugin serves the key file itself.
• Rebuild llms.txt on publish — llms.txt is rebuilt from your published pages. This replaces any text you wrote by hand.

A real robots.txt or llms.txt file in the root of your site always wins over these.

Redirects#

Agent to WordPress adds and removes redirects through the plugin. They go into the Redirection plugin or Rank Math › Redirections when one of them is active; otherwise into a small list kept by the Rankfinity Connector. Every redirect is a preview you approve, with Undo.

Live bot visits#

What is recorded#

For each visit by a known bot: which bot, the page, the HTTP status code, and the time. Your visitors' IP addresses are not sent to Rankfinity; the check happens on your site.

Verification#

Anyone can pretend to be Googlebot by setting a browser name. The plugin checks:

• Googlebot and Bingbot — checked against the identity each bot publishes.
• ChatGPT and Perplexity bots — against the IP ranges their operators publish.
• Others — by browser name only.

The result is shown as:

The checks run in the background every 5 minutes, never during the page load, so they do not slow your site.

Reading the table#

In Site audit › Indexing › Live bot visits: filter by bot, by check result and by status code (2xx–5xx), search by address, and Export CSV. A status other than 200 on important pages — for example Googlebot getting 404 or 500 — is worth fixing right away.

Use it to answer:

• Did Googlebot visit the page I just published?
• Are AI assistants reading my site at all?
• Do bots hit pages that return errors?

Visits are kept for 90 days.

Removing the plugin#

Deactivate and delete it in WordPress › Plugins. Uninstalling removes all its settings and queued data from WordPress. Then click Remove key in Rankfinity.

Security#

• The key identifies the project; the secret part is never stored in readable form on our side.
• Each batch is signed and time-stamped; old or altered batches are rejected.
• The plugin talks to Rankfinity only over HTTPS.
• Clients can view bot visits but cannot create or change keys.

Common questions#

Does the plugin slow down my site? No. It only notes the visit during the request; checks and sending run later in the background.

Why is ClaudeBot "Unverified"? There is no published IP list we can check it against, so only the browser name is matched.

I don't use WordPress. Can I see bot visits? Not yet. The bot visits feature currently needs the WordPress plugin.

Does the plugin publish posts? No. Publishing and editing use WordPress's own application password, which you approve when you connect. The plugin only opens the SEO fields, site files, sitemap and redirects to that connection, tells Rankfinity what your site uses (page builder, cache and SEO plugins), clears the page cache of a page the agent changed, and records bot visits.

Which version do I have? WordPress › Plugins shows it, and Agent to WordPress shows "Rankfinity Connector 1.4.0 ✓" next to "Connected".

Is there a cost? No. The plugin and bot visits are free.