RealTrace AI – Real Human and AI Traffic Counter

RealTrace AI provides real-time, privacy-first analytics for WordPress. It tracks incoming visitors through a dual-layer approach (server-side capture and client-side non-blocking REST beacons) to distinguish real humans from AI crawlers, search engine indexers, and automated scraping tools. Unlike standard visitor counters that treat every automated HTTP hit as a genuine person, RealTrace AI filters and segments incoming traffic into three distinct tiers: Humans, AI & LLM Crawlers, and Search Engine Bots. Bots & Crawlers Detected Out-of-the-Box RealTrace AI evaluates request patterns, URI endpoints, and User-Agent headers against extensive internal signatures: 1. AI & LLM Crawlers

• OpenAI: GPTBot, ChatGPT-User, OAI-SearchBot
• Anthropic: ClaudeBot, Claude-Web, Anthropic-AI
• Google AI: Google-Extended, Gemini, Gemini Deep Research
• Perplexity: PerplexityBot, Perplexity-AI
• Meta: Meta-ExternalAgent, Meta-ExternalFetcher, FacebookExternalHit
• xAI: GrokBot, xAI-Crawler
• ByteDance: ByteSpider
• DeepSeek: DeepSeek Bot, DeepSeek Web Crawler
• Apple: Applebot-Extended (Apple Intelligence)
• Mistral AI: MistralAI Crawler
• Cohere: Cohere-AI
• Amazon: AmazonBot
• AI Datasets & Aggregators: Common Crawl (CCBot), Diffbot, You.com (YouBot), DuckAssistBot, Allen AI (AI2Bot), Webz.io / Omgili, ImageSift, Timpi, Katerat, SentientMachine, Pango

2. Search Engine Indexers

• Googlebot, Google Asset Service, Google Inspection Tool
• Bingbot, Applebot, Baidu Spider, YandexBot / Yandex Engine
• DuckDuckBot, Sogou Spider, Exabot, Qwantify, SeznamBot, PetalBot, CocCoc Bot
• Moz DotBot, AhrefsBot, SemrushBot, Majestic MJ12bot

3. Social Previews & Uptime Monitors

• TwitterBot / X, LinkedInBot, WhatsApp Preview, TelegramBot, Slackbot, DiscordBot, Pinterest Bot
• UptimeRobot, Pingdom, Site24x7, StatusCake, Screaming Frog SEO Spider, Seltz Sitemap Fetcher

4. Developer Tools & Headless Scrapers

• Puppeteer, Playwright, Selenium, Headless Chrome, PhantomJS, Cypress
• Python (Requests, urllib, aiohttp), Scrapy Framework
• cURL, Wget, HTTPie, Postman Runtime, Insomnia
• Node.js (Axios, Fetch, Got), Go HTTP, Java HTTP Client, Apache HttpClient, OkHttp, Guzzle PHP, Perl libwww, WinHTTP

5. Automated Endpoint Scrapers

• Flags unauthenticated direct automated scrapes targeting sensitive or automated endpoints like /wp-json/oembed/, /.well-known/, /feed, /rss, /wp-cron.php, /xmlrpc.php, and /wp-comments-post.php.

Included Shortcodes

• [realtrace_smart_counter] – Displays a complete visitor card showing total humans, bots, and the verified Human Score percentage.
• [realtrace_traffic_battle] – Displays an interactive split progress bar comparing human visitors against AI scrapers.
• [realtrace_human_counter] – Outputs the raw formatted count of verified human visitors.
• [realtrace_ai_counter] – Outputs the raw formatted count of detected bots and AI scrapers.

1.1.2

• Database Fix: Resolved SQLite compatibility error in 7-day trend queries by passing date boundaries directly from PHP, ensuring compatibility with standard MySQL, MariaDB, and SQLite (WordPress Playground).
• Fix: Resolved PHP 8+ fatal error during plugin activation by eliminating non-static method calls within static activation routines.
• Database Schema: Corrected strict formatting in dbDelta schema definition to guarantee clean creation of the country_code column and indexes on fresh installs.
• Stability: Added WordPress Playground/WASM detection to prevent sandbox download timeouts and false corrupted database alerts.
• Accuracy: Reclassified Slackbot and social media preview crawlers under the Other Bot category instead of Human.

1.1.1

• Feature: Added native CSV and JSON log export with active category filter support.
• Security & Accuracy: Patched REST probe loophole—direct automated hits to /wp-json/ routes are now correctly flagged as automated scrapers instead of human visits.
• Fix: Excluded internal tracking endpoints from server-side hit logging to eliminate self-ping loops.

1.1.1

• Feature: Added native CSV and JSON log export with active category filter support.
• Security & Accuracy: Patched REST probe loophole—direct automated hits to /wp-json/ routes are now correctly flagged as automated scrapers instead of human visits.
• Fix: Excluded internal tracking endpoints from server-side hit logging to eliminate self-ping loops.

1.1.0

• Feature: Added native offline binary geolocation using MaxMind .mmdb reader support.
• Feature: Added an asynchronous admin REST API endpoint (realtrace/v1/update-geo-db) for downloading and verifying the Geo database.
• Feature: Added binary integrity validation (\xab\xcd\xefMaxMind.com) to detect and purge truncated or incomplete downloads.
• Feature: Integrated dashboard warning and error notices when the local database is missing or corrupt.
• Design: Complete UI redesign of the Settings screen with a brand-aligned layout, status badges, and single-screen feedback banners.
• Improvement: Expanded the offline multi-octet fallback subnet router for Middle East and European IP blocks.

1.0.0

• Initial public release on WordPress.org.