About this plugin
AskThis adds a lightweight (<12KB) sharing widget to your posts, pages and WooCommerce products:
- AI share buttons — visitors send your page to any of 14 AI engines (ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, Copilot, Grok, Mistral, DeepSeek, DuckDuckGo, Brave, Kagi, Consensus, SciSpace and Andi) with a neutral, citation-friendly prompt built for the page type.
- Social share buttons — 28 networks, pick the ones you want: Facebook, X (Twitter), LinkedIn, WhatsApp, Pinterest, Reddit, Telegram, email, SMS and copy link; Line, VK, Viber, Weibo, Bluesky, Threads, Tumblr, Pocket, Hacker News, Flipboard and Xing; plus copy-to-app sharing for Messenger, Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat, WeChat, KakaoTalk and Mastodon.
- AI Graph meta tags ( ai:type, ai:title, ai:summary, ai:cite_as, and product tags like ai:price and ai:availability ) that tell AI answer engines how to read, summarize and cite your pages.
- One-click setup — press Connect to AskThis and the plugin creates (or signs you in to) a free AskThis account and fills in your Site ID for you. Nothing to copy across by hand.
- WooCommerce and ecommerce aware: product pages automatically map title, price, currency, brand and stock status into the AI tags and prompts, so an AI answering “is this the right product for me” reads accurate e-commerce data instead of guessing.
AI SEO / answer engine optimization. Search is shifting from ten blue links to answers
written by AI. AskThis gives you both halves of that: AI Graph meta tags describe your page
in a vocabulary answer engines can read, so you are summarized accurately and cited by name
rather than paraphrased away — and the AI share buttons let a reader carry your page into
ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini or Perplexity with a prompt that asks the engine to cite the source.
This is what AI SEO, answer engine optimization (AEO) and generative engine optimization
(GEO) describe: being readable, quotable and attributable to machines, not just to people.
In practice it means AI visibility in AI search — an LLM that reaches your page can identify
what it is, summarize it faithfully and produce an AI citation pointing back to you, which is
the difference between traffic from search engines and being quietly absorbed into an answer.
The widget loads asynchronously from a CDN and never blocks page rendering, and works with classic and block themes.
Cache friendly. Changing a setting clears the page cache for you — AskThis triggers a purge in LiteSpeed Cache, WP Rocket, W3 Total Cache, WP Super Cache and SG Optimizer, so you never have to wonder why a layout change did not appear on the front end.
Place it automatically after your content, or manually with the AskThis Share Widget block, the [askthis] shortcode, or the classic AskThis Share Widget widget in any widget area.
External services
io), the service that powers the
sharing widget and its analytics. An AskThis account and Site ID are required
for the plugin to do anything.
Four separate connections are made:
-
io
On every page where the widget is enabled, the visitor’s browser loads
js. No data is sent by the plugin; this is a
script request, so the visitor’s IP address and user agent reach AskThis as
they would with any externally hosted script.
-
io
When an administrator saves the plugin settings, the site makes one
io/api/v1/sites/{site-id}/config
to confirm the Site ID is valid. Only the Site ID is sent. No visitor data
and no site content are included. If the request fails the setting is still
saved; verification is advisory.
-
io
When a visitor views or interacts with the widget, the widget sends event
io. Each event contains: the event type
(view, share, ai_click, question), your Site ID, the platform or AI engine
chosen, the URL of the page, and a timestamp. If a visitor types a question
into the AI panel, that question text is included. Events are batched in the
browser and sent periodically, not on every interaction.
AskThis derives a pseudonymous identifier at its edge for deduplication. The
plugin itself stores nothing about visitors and sets no cookies.
-
io
Only when an administrator presses “Connect to AskThis”, the browser is sent
io/connect carrying this site’s address and the
signed-in administrator’s email address. On that page you sign in to AskThis
(or create a free account) and approve the connection; approving it creates
an AskThis account and a site record for this address if you do not already
have them. You are then returned here with a single-use code, which this site
io/api/v1/connect/exchange
for your Site ID. Nothing is sent unless you press the button, and no
WordPress password, user list or content is included at any point.
You can instead skip this entirely and paste a Site ID by hand.
Service provided by Agochar Tech LLP.
io/legal/terms/
io/legal/privacy/