Get your WordPress site cited by AI search.
WordPress can do everything AI crawlers need, but a setting, a plugin or the host can quietly undo it. Citable audits your site every week, measures whether AI cites you and publishes sourced articles to WordPress as drafts or, if you want, live.
Why AI cites (or skips) WordPress sites
AI search engines cite pages they can fetch and read, that answer the question directly and that look trustworthy: clear authorship, sources, structured data. WordPress serves pre-rendered HTML, so the text is there for crawlers that don’t run JavaScript.
On WordPress, robots.txt, meta tags, sitemaps and schema are usually handled by an SEO plugin (Yoast SEO, Rank Math…). That’s convenient, and it’s also where an old rule that blocks AI crawlers or a stray noindex tends to hide.
The rest is content. Citable checks which of your buyers’ questions AI answers with someone else’s page, and publishes sourced articles that answer them as WordPress posts.
What gets in the way on WordPress
Citable’s weekly audit recognises WordPress and, for each problem, gives you the steps in WordPress itself.
01
robots.txt edited by the SEO plugin
With Yoast SEO it’s in Tools → File editor; with Rank Math, General Settings → Edit robots.txt; without either, it’s a file at the root of your hosting. The audit checks each AI search crawler and gives you the corrected file, keeping your other rules.
02
“Discourage search engines” still ticked
Settings → Reading → “Discourage search engines from indexing this site” is often left on after a redesign. On a single page, the SEO plugin’s Advanced tab can also hide it. The audit flags the homepage and important pages with noindex.
03
Organization schema half filled in
Yoast SEO outputs Organization schema from Settings → Site representation: choose Organization and add the name, logo and your profiles. The audit checks it and writes the JSON-LD for anything missing.
04
Site language and one address
Set Settings → General → Site Language, and use the same https address in WordPress Address and Site Address; ask your host to redirect the other versions with a 301.
05
Two sitemaps, or none
WordPress publishes /wp-sitemap.xml on its own; Yoast SEO and Rank Math replace it with /sitemap_index.xml. Check XML sitemaps are on in your SEO plugin.
Connect WordPress to Citable
Takes a few minutes. Every article then arrives in your CMS, as a draft or published on its own, depending on how you set publishing.
- 1
Create your Citable account and add your site: website, competitors and buyer questions.
- 2
Open Settings → CMS & publishing for that site and choose WordPress.
- 3
In WordPress, open Users → Profile → Application passwords. Name it “Citable” and click Add.
- 4
Copy the password (24 characters) and paste it in Citable with your site URL and username.
- 5
We test the connection before saving. The password is stored encrypted.
- 6
In the same tab, choose how articles get published: scheduled with an approval window, or Drafts only.
What you need
- WordPress 5.6 or later, reachable on the public internet
- A user with the Author role or above
- An application password for that user
Some hosts strip the Authorization header (Apache without CGIPassAuth). If the test says 401 with the right password, ask your host.
What Citable publishes on WordPress
Draft or live
Arrives as a draft. It only goes live if you turn on automatic publishing. To unpublish, switch it to draft in WordPress.
Unpublish from WordPress
Images, the featured image included, are uploaded to your media library, and tags are created if they don’t exist. To improve a post that’s already live, Citable sends a new draft instead of editing it, because WordPress shows edits to a published post straight away.
Fields we fill
- Title and slug
- Body in HTML, with tables and a table of contents
- Excerpt
- Featured image (uploaded to your media library)
- Tags (created if they don’t exist)
- Publication date
- Images in the article (charts, diagrams): uploaded to your media library
Citable on WordPress: questions
What people ask before they start. If something’s missing, write to us.
Write to usDo I need a plugin to connect WordPress?
No. Citable uses the WordPress REST API with an application password (WordPress 5.6 or later). You create it in Users → Profile → Application passwords.
The connection test says 401 with the right password. Why?
Some hosts strip the Authorization header (Apache without CGIPassAuth). Ask your host to let it through; nothing needs to change in Citable.
Is my site on WordPress.com?
If it’s hosted on WordPress.com, use the WordPress.com connector: you sign in with WordPress.com and it works on every plan. This page is for WordPress on your own hosting.
Can AI crawlers read my WordPress site?
WordPress serves pre-rendered HTML, so yes, unless robots.txt, a noindex or a firewall stops them. Citable’s audit checks the first two from outside; rules in a firewall or CDN that block bots by IP aren’t visible from outside, so check those with your host.
Can Citable promise AI will cite my site?
No, and nobody can. Citable measures every week how often each AI mentions and cites you, with a confidence range, publishes sourced articles for the gaps and shows when a published URL starts being cited.
See what AI says about you before connecting anything.