# AEO Pugmill Intelligence Network

> We are watching the watchers. The AEO Pugmill Intelligence Network is a cooperative of WordPress site owners tracking how AI answer engines crawl the web in real time.

## What this site is

AEO (Answer Engine Optimization) best practices are a moving target — AI answer engines like ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, and Gemini are still learning what content they prefer. The AEO Pugmill Intelligence Network exists to find out in real time.

WordPress site owners install the free AEO Pugmill plugin and opt in to Bot Analytics. Their anonymized bot signal data — which crawlers visited, how often, what content types they requested — is aggregated across all contributing sites and surfaced here as network-wide trends.

**You give signal. You get intelligence.** Every participating site's AEO gets sharper together.

Data is processed every 15 minutes and cached hourly. No personal data is collected. All contributions are anonymous.

## How to join

1. Install the free AEO Pugmill plugin: https://aeopugmill.com/plugin
2. Opt in to Bot Analytics in the plugin settings
3. Your site's anonymized crawler signals begin contributing immediately
4. Return here to see aggregate trends across the full network

## What the network tracks

### AI Answer Engine Crawlers
Bots from ChatGPT (GPTBot), Claude (ClaudeBot), Perplexity (PerplexityBot), Gemini (Google-Extended), Amazon (Amazonbot), Meta, and Mistral. These read content to answer user queries in real time.

### Training Data Crawlers
Bots collecting data to train foundation models: CCBot (Common Crawl), Bytespider (TikTok/ByteDance), Grok (xAI), DeepSeek, Cohere. Your content may become part of a future AI's knowledge base.

### Search Engine Crawlers
Traditional indexing bots: Googlebot, Bingbot, Applebot, DuckDuckBot, YandexBot, BaiduSpider.

### SEO Tool Bots
Commercial auditing tools: Semrush, Ahrefs, Dotbot, Majestic.

## What the data shows

The network tracks content signals for each bot category:

- **Word Count** — content length at crawl time: `<500`, `500-1500`, `1500+`
- **Content Freshness** — age of content since publish: `0-7d`, `8-30d`, `31-90d`, `90d+`
- **Fact Density** — concentration of verifiable claims (statistics, named entities, citations): `low`, `medium`, `high`
- **URL Depth** — path depth in site hierarchy: `shallow`, `medium`, `deep`
- **URL Type** — WordPress content type: post, page, category, tag, etc.

Based on network data, AI answer engine crawlers show preference for longer-form content (1500+ words), recently updated content (under 30 days), and content with high fact density.

## AEO content formats tracked

AEO-specific content endpoints that bots request on contributing sites:

- `/llms.txt` — site summary for AI crawlers (this file format)
- `/llms-full.txt` — full content export for AI crawlers
- `/post-markdown/[slug]` — individual posts as structured Markdown
- `/site-summary` — structured site overview

## API

The full aggregated dataset is available as JSON:

- **Endpoint**: https://aeopugmill.com/api/report
- **Method**: GET
- **Format**: JSON
- **Cache**: 1 hour (s-maxage=3600)

### Response shape

```json
{
  "generated": "2026-04-09",
  "sites_contributing": 42,
  "categories": {
    "ai":       { "total": 12400, "sites": 31, "change_pct": 14 },
    "search":   { "total":  8900, "sites": 38, "change_pct": -2 },
    "seo":      { "total":  3200, "sites": 22, "change_pct":  5 },
    "training": { "total":  2100, "sites": 18, "change_pct": 21 }
  },
  "last_30_days": {
    "ChatGPT":   { "html": 8400, "llms_txt": 320, "robots_txt": 210 },
    "Googlebot": { "html": 6100, "sitemap": 180 }
  },
  "signals": {
    "ChatGPT": {
      "word_count":        { "1500+": { "tally_sum": 840, "site_count": 18 } },
      "content_freshness": { "0-7d":  { "tally_sum": 420, "site_count": 12 } }
    }
  }
}
```

## About AEO Pugmill

AEO Pugmill is a free WordPress plugin that adds AEO support to any WordPress site:

- Generates llms.txt and llms-full.txt automatically
- Adds AEO metadata to posts and pages
- Creates Markdown endpoints for AI crawlers
- Produces structured site summaries
- Shows per-site Bot Analytics (which bots, how often, what content)
- Optionally contributes anonymized signals to the AEO Pugmill Intelligence Network

Pro tier unlocks bulk AEO updates and AI-assisted content refinement (BYOK: Claude, ChatGPT, or Gemini).

Plugin: https://aeopugmill.com/plugin
Network: https://aeopugmill.com
Full content: https://aeopugmill.com/llms-full.txt