Why Every Publisher Needs a Secure, AI-optimized Syndication Strategy

Last year, SimpleFeed released a WordPress plugin to give visibility to publishers about the number of AI bots crawling their site, and the ability to optionally block them. At a recent IAB Tech Lab meeting, we discussed new challenges for publishers concerned about their content being crawled by LLMs without license or compensation. With the release of AI-powered browsers and agents, it will become increasingly difficult to determine if page requests come from a logged in user or an AI Bot. Add that to the long list of issues publishers are facing, including declining search and social traffic and steep declines from traditional revenue sources.

As the open web declines, publishers are seeking out new channels for distribution and monetization. Increasingly, syndication is the answer. However, success requires experience with new data types, formats and enhanced metadata.

Today SimpleFeed is launching a new, customer-specific WordPress Plugin release (v. 2.1.6). This version is re-architected to enable customers to publish their content via a secure API connection to SimpleFeed, opening new private distribution channels and content licensing opportunities. This allows web publishers to further lock down their site, limiting access to subscribers, registered users and licensed partners.

We have also added to the plugin settings an option to vectorize future posts, optimizing them for LLMs and AI Agents that could be licensed to access the archive on an as-needed basis via a RAG interface or MCP server.

SimpleFeed will continue to be the best partner to evolve your syndication strategy for the future and ensure your stories are properly monetized while also maintaining your reach via your licensed partnerships.