plos.org — August 2026 traffic, keywords & AI visibility

plos.org draws an estimated 185,500 visits a month from search engines. Effectively all of it is organic — about 185,500 visits from unpaid results. Spread across 69,900 ranking keywords, that averages roughly 2.7 organic visits per keyword.

On our AI visibility scale plos.org earns 94 of 100 points, a grade A+. It takes full marks for LLMS.txt, Crawlability and Structured data. The biggest gap is Company profile, at 22 of 25 points (7/8 core fields), worth 3 points if closed. It also loses points on SEO health (17/20).

The llms.txt on plos.org runs to 134 lines (7,672 characters) across 12 sections, last generated in June 2026. It introduces the site as "Public Library of Science". It tells AI engines the business works in Scientific Publishing, Open Access and Academic Research. It describes 3 products, including PLOS ONE, PLOS Biology and PLOS Medicine. Services it lists include Peer Review Management, Open Access Publishing and Research Impact Tools. The keywords it claims start with "open access", "scientific publishing", "peer review" and "PLOS ONE".

# Public Library of Science

## About
Public Library of Science operates as a nonprofit publisher focused on making peer-reviewed research freely available. They run a portfolio of journals that cover biology, medicine, genetics and many other scientific fields. Researchers submit manuscripts that go through rigorous peer review before publication under open licenses. The model removes paywalls so anyone can read and build on the findings without subscriptions. Institutions and funders often cover article processing charges to support this approach. PLOS started with the goal of transforming how science communicates and shares knowledge. Their largest journal, PLOS ONE, accepts sound science across disciplines rather than limiting scope to narrow topics. Other titles like PLOS Biology and PLOS Medicine target high-impact work in specific domains. The organization maintains strict editorial standards while pushing for greater transparency in data and methods. They also develop tools that help authors manage submissions and track article impact after publication. Universities and research institutes form the core user base along with individual scientists in both developed and emerging regions. Funders such as NIH and Wellcome Trust have backed their open-access principles from early on. PLOS advocates for policy changes that favor immediate open access over traditional subscript

Google lists plos.org for about 69,900 keywords, which together bring an estimated 185,500 organic visits a month.

The latest technical audit of plos.org scored 94 out of 100 overall. SEO is its weakest area at 85, while accessibility scores highest at 99. The audit makes 12 recommendations in all, and 3 of the 4 listed first are rated high priority or critical.

Public Library of Science's company profile names nature.com, science.org, frontiersin.org and mdpi.com as competitors. Its own llms.txt adds cell.com and elifesciences.org. Outside its market, the domains ranked closest to it in our worldwide ranking are susercontent.com, t-bank-app.ru, yale.edu and nsone.net.

nature.com

science.org

frontiersin.org

mdpi.com

cell.com

elifesciences.org