A caching plugin, or your host’s built-in cache, keeps a ready-made copy of each page and hands it out without waking WordPress. Forge AI Bot Log lives inside WordPress, so it never hears about those visits. People are still counted by Pro, because that tracking runs in the visitor’s browser. Bots do not run browser code, so a bot visit to a cached page is invisible unless you use one of the fixes below.
How much is missing depends on the cache. Training crawlers trawl old pages that are rarely cached, so they show up. Live-read bots fetch your fresh, popular pages, which are usually cached, so those are the ones most under-counted.
Fix 1: tell the cache to let AI bots through
Every bot announces its name when it asks for a page. Most caching plugins can be told “always run WordPress for visitors with these names”. Bots are a small share of traffic, so this costs almost nothing in speed.
The plugin’s Settings screen shows the exact list of names to paste. Where to paste them:
| Cache | Where |
|---|---|
| WP Rocket | Pro does this for you. Otherwise: Settings, Advanced Rules, Never Cache User Agent(s). |
| LiteSpeed Cache | Cache, Excludes, Do Not Cache User Agents. |
| W3 Total Cache | Performance, Page Cache, Advanced, Rejected User Agents. |
| WP Super Cache | Settings, WP Super Cache, Advanced, Rejected User Agents. |
| WP Fastest Cache | Exclude, Add New Rule, User-Agent. |
| Breeze | Advanced Options, Never Cache These User Agents. |
| Hummingbird | Caching, Page Caching, Settings, Exclude user agents. |
| SiteGround Speed Optimizer | Cannot skip visitors by name. Use Fix 2. |
| Cache Enabler | No visitor exclusion. Use Fix 2. |
| Cloudflare | Set in your Cloudflare account, not WordPress. Use Fix 2, or a Cloudflare cache rule on the user agent. |
| WP Engine | The portal’s cache exclusions are by page address only. Ask WP Engine support to exclude these user agents from the page cache. |
| Kinsta | MyKinsta exclusions are by page address. Ask Kinsta support to exclude these user agents. |
| Flywheel | Ask Flywheel support. |
| Pantheon | Ask Pantheon support. |
Fix 2: import your server’s log file
Your web server keeps a plain text file of every request it answered, cached or not. The plugin can read it and recover every bot visit. Visits it already recorded are not counted twice. In the free plugin this is a button on the Settings screen; Pro reads the file every hour on its own.
The catch is that WordPress must be able to read the file. On a VPS or cPanel host it usually can; see the log import guide for where the file lives. On WP Engine and Flywheel the logs are downloaded from the control panel and WordPress cannot read them from disk, so use Fix 1 there. Kinsta and Pantheon vary; try the path their support gives you.
Link: Importing your server log file
If neither is possible
Some hosts allow neither fix. The plugin still counts everything that reaches WordPress, and Pro still counts every visitor. Treat the bot numbers as a floor, not a total; the plugin says so on screen so nobody is misled.
How the plugin knows
The free plugin recognises common caching plugins and managed hosts and shows a notice. Pro also fetches your own home page and looks for cache headers, so host-level caches with no WordPress plugin are found too. If Pro says it could not check, some hosts block a site from fetching itself; if you know you use a cache, pick browser mode by hand in Pro Settings, Advanced.