Title: Known Agents – Track AI Bots and Crawlers, Block Scrapers, Analyze LLM Referral Traffic Author: gavindarkvisitors Published: June 9, 2024 Last modified: February 24, 2026 --- Search plugins ![](https://ps.w.org/dark-visitors/assets/banner-772x250.png?rev=3468118) ![](https://ps.w.org/dark-visitors/assets/icon.svg?rev=3468118) # Known Agents – Track AI Bots and Crawlers, Block Scrapers, Analyze LLM Referral Traffic By [gavindarkvisitors](https://profiles.wordpress.org/gavindarkvisitors/) [Download](https://downloads.wordpress.org/plugin/dark-visitors.1.28.0.zip) * [Details](https://pcd.wordpress.org/plugins/dark-visitors/#description) * [Reviews](https://pcd.wordpress.org/plugins/dark-visitors/#reviews) * [Installation](https://pcd.wordpress.org/plugins/dark-visitors/#installation) * [Development](https://pcd.wordpress.org/plugins/dark-visitors/#developers) [Support](https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/dark-visitors/) ## Description Track crawlers, scrapers, LLM assistants, and AI agents on your website. Generate a robots.txt that blocks AI bots. Formerly Dark Visitors. ### Track, control, and optimize your website for AI agents and bots You have [40% more visitors than you think](https://knownagents.com/insights). Protect your content from unwanted AI scraping and crawling, and turn the rising wave of AI agents, LLM assistants, and other bots crawling your website into a new growth channel for your business. For full details, visit the [Known Agents](https://knownagents.com/) website. ### 1. Agent Analytics Get realtime insight into the hidden ecosystem of crawlers, scrapers, and AI agents browsing your website. * **Monitor traffic from crawlers and scrapers**: Track the hidden activity of [all known artificial agents](https://knownagents.com/agents) visiting your website in real time. * **Analyze how AI agents browse your website**: Review sessions from AI models autonomously navigating and interacting with your website. Optimize their experience to increase conversions and human referrals. * **Detect bots spoofing legitimate agents**: Identify bad actors and unauthorized scrapers pretending to be legitimate agents like Googlebot or Bingbot. * **Get alerted to bot traffic spikes**: Stay informed when an agent’s traffic starts surging or overloading your server. * **See which agents visit most frequently and which pages they target**: Break down bot traffic by agent and URL to understand where crawlers and scrapers are focused. * **Export reports to CSV**: Download agent activity reports for custom analysis. ### 2. LLM Referral Tracking Measure human conversions from AI chat and search platforms like ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude, and more. * **Find out which AI platforms are sending you traffic**: See which LLMs are recommending your website and measure how many humans click through to visit. * **Export reports to CSV**: Download LLM referral reports for custom analysis. ### 3. Automatic Robots.txt Protect IP, reduce server cost, and save time by serving a robots.txt that updates continuously. * **Block crawlers and scrapers by category**: Control access for entire agent categories including AI crawlers, scrapers, SEO bots, and more. One selection covers every current and future agent in that group. * **Stop tracking new bots manually**: Your robots.txt is updated as new agents emerge, so you never have to manage them yourself or make manual edits. * **Enforce robots.txt rules with the WordPress plugin**: The WordPress plugin detects and blocks bots that ignore your robots.txt rules, protecting your content from unauthorized access. ### Demos Demos can be found on the [home page](https://knownagents.com/). ### Further Details This plugin connects your website to [Known Agents](https://knownagents.com/). It uses the Known Agents API to connect to your account and provide functionality. By signing up, you agree to the [Terms of Service](https://knownagents.com/terms-of-service) and [Privacy Policy](https://knownagents.com/privacy-policy). Are you finding this plugin useful? Please [leave us a ★★★★★ review](https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/dark-visitors/reviews/#new-post)! Otherwise, please [ask us for help](https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/dark-visitors/). ## Screenshots * [[ * Insights into crawler and scraper activity * [[ * Insights into AI agent activity * [[ * A realtime timeline of all agent visits to the website * [[ * Insights into human referrals from AI chat and search LLMs * [[ * An automatically generated robots.txt * [[ * An analysis of robots.txt rules * [[ * Blocked agents who tried to ignore the robots.txt rules ## Installation 1. Install and activate the Known Agents plugin from the WordPress Plugin Directory 2. [Sign up](https://knownagents.com/sign-up) for Known Agents and [create a new project](https://knownagents.com/projects) for your website. 3. Copy your access token from the project’s settings page, then paste it into the access token field on the plugin’s configuration page. Your website is now connected to Known Agents. ## FAQ ### Do I need a Known Agents account to use this plugin? Yes. Creating an account is free and only takes a few seconds. This is where you’ll be able to see dashboards and insights into agent activity on your website. ### Is Known Agents free? Known Agents is a freemium service. The free tier gives you immediate visibility into your hidden bot traffic with no credit card required. You can upgrade to unlock higher event volumes, additional projects for multiple websites, CSV export, API access, and priority support. Full details are on the [pricing](https://knownagents.com/pricing) page. ### Which AI agents and bots does Known Agents track? Known Agents tracks thousands of known AI agents, web crawlers, and scrapers by inspecting the user agent string and other signals on each request. This includes GPTBot (OpenAI), ClaudeBot (Anthropic), PerplexityBot, Googlebot, Bytespider (TikTok), CCBot (Common Crawl), and many more. See the full [agent directory](https://knownagents.com/agents) for the complete list. ### How are the AI agents and bots categorized? Known Agents categorizes agents into distinct types to help you understand and control different kinds of bot traffic. These categories include AI Agents, AI Assistants, AI Data Scrapers, AI Search Crawlers, Archivers, Developer Helpers, Fetchers, Automated Agents, Intelligence Gatherers, Scrapers, SEO Crawlers, Search Engine Crawlers, Security Scanners, and Undocumented AI Agents. Each agent in our directory is classified into one of these categories. ### Why should I care about bot and AI agent traffic to my website? AI agent traffic has a direct and growing impact on your business. It determines the following: * Whether your content is included in AI model training datasets * Whether AI shopping agents can successfully complete purchases on your site * How accurately AI assistants like ChatGPT and Claude summarize and recommend your content to users * How your pages rank in traditional and AI-powered search engine results * How much server bandwidth and cost bot traffic consumes * Whether bad actors and unauthorized scrapers are stealing your content With AI adoption accelerating, bot traffic is becoming one of the most important segments to understand and optimize for. ### How much of my website traffic comes from bots and AI agents? More than you think. On average, [40% or more of website visits](https://knownagents.com/insights) come from AI agents and bots, a volume that is completely invisible to traditional analytics tools like Google Analytics. This has been observed consistently across websites of all sizes and industries. ## Reviews ![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/96660993ac012ddd55e2151996643c10f56864b64223b6568c6c9a617c132a78? s=60&d=retro&r=g) ### 󠀁[Very very helpful](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/very-very-helpful-19/)󠁿 [weboersma](https://profiles.wordpress.org/weboersma/) September 24, 2025 1 reply Very good: shows all bot-crawlers.Our website was sometimes down due to bot-crawlers, with this tool it is easy to solve. Very good logging of bots.This was the only good plugin I could find for this purpose.Some bots ignore robots.txt. So I manually changed htaccess, that worked very good. ![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/828be194b158eb9650a707521cfa24aab77b0c5c9962d1fed9fd3bc4d8b6f006? s=60&d=retro&r=g) ### 󠀁[Easy to understand and set up!](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/easy-to-understand-and-set-up-5/)󠁿 [nealumphred](https://profiles.wordpress.org/nealumphred/) November 30, 2024 Easy to understand and set up. Keep on keepin’ on … ![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/2d008e71568293920c5ff75eb6cec1a564717c50538a526535a9f6fe77925b47? s=60&d=retro&r=g) ### 󠀁[Totaly very useful](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/totaly-useless-5/)󠁿 [cotros](https://profiles.wordpress.org/cotros/) November 3, 2024 5 replies Bingbot and googlebot are hitting my site with hundreds of visits per minute and Gavin from support spotted the problem immediately! ![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/6cfc8c01f1ea3a75ec6f7dba8f2a014ef4cca4fd63a50fb3c8772e492e472ecc? s=60&d=retro&r=g) ### 󠀁[Very Useful Plugin](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/very-useful-plugin-1574/)󠁿 [Dennis Bareis](https://profiles.wordpress.org/dbareis/) August 21, 2024 An easy improvement would be to link to the settings page from the plugin entry like other plugins, other than that, in general this plugin and its online dashboard is generally well thought out and useful. My website is small and has limited resources that get overrun by crawlers making it unavailable. This plugin helps identify the culprits and decide if I should block them or not. For free you can block them in robots.txt, as I have a physical file, the plugin won’t touch that but its easy to add manually. It will report those crawlers that ignore the robots file and the paid version will enforce those rules, but I just update “.htaccess” myself. I’m reducing my rating by a star since you won’t get much “Agent Analytics” (per month) and for my tiny site it quickly ran out, we are a NFP so don’t have money to burn on subscriptions. The the description for the plan incorrectly states “Unlimited Agent Analytics” when the plan only includes 100,000 events. ![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/69cd18347a081d15769e10464792fca52ae876189a55dfec326885fb304be6c2? s=60&d=retro&r=g) ### 󠀁[Begun my review…](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/begun-my-review/)󠁿 [hackrepair](https://profiles.wordpress.org/hackrepair/) July 29, 2024 1 reply Please remind me in a month to provide an update on the performance of this plugin on a heavily visited website. ![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/607b6f2a53911635739acaece39c019cbd4844998da8641bf7de9753a3f0ef22? s=60&d=retro&r=g) ### 󠀁[Super useful!](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/super-useful-211/)󠁿 [ghking](https://profiles.wordpress.org/ghking/) June 9, 2024 This is a great plugin. I had no idea how many bots were visiting my website every day. Super interesting insights, and a handy way to keep my robots.txt up to date. Thanks! [ Read all 5 reviews ](https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/dark-visitors/reviews/) ## Contributors & Developers “Known Agents – Track AI Bots and Crawlers, Block Scrapers, Analyze LLM Referral Traffic” is open source software. The following people have contributed to this plugin. Contributors * [ gavindarkvisitors ](https://profiles.wordpress.org/gavindarkvisitors/) [Translate “Known Agents – Track AI Bots and Crawlers, Block Scrapers, Analyze LLM Referral Traffic” into your language.](https://translate.wordpress.org/projects/wp-plugins/dark-visitors) ### Interested in development? [Browse the code](https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/dark-visitors/), check out the [SVN repository](https://plugins.svn.wordpress.org/dark-visitors/), or subscribe to the [development log](https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/log/dark-visitors/) by [RSS](https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/log/dark-visitors/?limit=100&mode=stop_on_copy&format=rss). ## Changelog #### 1.28.0 * Changed name from Dark Visitors to Known Agents #### 1.27.0 * Code updates #### 1.26.0 * Code updates #### 1.25.0 * Code updates #### 1.24.0 * Code updates #### 1.23.0 * Code updates #### 1.22.0 * Code updates #### 1.21.0 * Added new agent types #### 1.20.0 * Screenshot and copy updates #### 1.19.0 * Code, design, screenshot, and copy updates #### 1.18.0 * Code updates #### 1.17.0 * Code updates #### 1.16.0 * Code updates #### 1.15.0 * Code updates #### 1.14.0 * Code updates #### 1.13.0 * Code updates #### 1.12.0 * Code updates #### 1.11.0 * Code updates #### 1.10.0 * Code updates #### 1.9.0 * Code updates #### 1.8.0 * Copy changes #### 1.7.0 * Design updates #### 1.6.0 * Code cleanup #### 1.5.0 * Simplified the analytics code #### 1.4.0 * Added the option to block agents #### 1.3.0 * Added a small edge case fix #### 1.2.0 * Updated copy #### 1.1.0 * Added the ability to disable analytics #### 1.0.0 * Initial release ## Meta * Version **1.28.0** * Last updated **1 month ago** * Active installations **1,000+** * WordPress version ** 5.0 or higher ** * Tested up to **6.9.4** * PHP version ** 7.0 or higher ** * Language * [English (US)](https://wordpress.org/plugins/dark-visitors/) * Tags * [detect](https://pcd.wordpress.org/plugins/tags/detect/)[firewall](https://pcd.wordpress.org/plugins/tags/firewall/) [monitor](https://pcd.wordpress.org/plugins/tags/monitor/)[robots.txt](https://pcd.wordpress.org/plugins/tags/robots-txt/) [training](https://pcd.wordpress.org/plugins/tags/training/) * [Advanced View](https://pcd.wordpress.org/plugins/dark-visitors/advanced/) ## Ratings 4.8 out of 5 stars. * [ 5 5-star reviews ](https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/dark-visitors/reviews/?filter=5) * [ 1 4-star review ](https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/dark-visitors/reviews/?filter=4) * [ 0 3-star reviews ](https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/dark-visitors/reviews/?filter=3) * [ 0 2-star reviews ](https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/dark-visitors/reviews/?filter=2) * [ 0 1-star reviews ](https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/dark-visitors/reviews/?filter=1) [Add my review](https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/dark-visitors/reviews/#new-post) [See all reviews](https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/dark-visitors/reviews/) ## Contributors * [ gavindarkvisitors ](https://profiles.wordpress.org/gavindarkvisitors/) ## Support Got something to say? Need help? [View support forum](https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/dark-visitors/)