OAI-SearchBot

OpenAI's search crawler. It surfaces websites in ChatGPT's search features and is independent of GPTBot.

What happens if you block it

Your site won't be shown in ChatGPT search answers, though it can still appear as a navigational link.

Our take

Allow it if you want ChatGPT to cite and link your pages. This is the crawler most worth unblocking at the firewall.

robots.txt

To block it:

User-agent: OAI-SearchBot
Disallow: /

To allow it explicitly (useful when a wider rule blocks other bots):

User-agent: OAI-SearchBot
Allow: /

The operator's own words

Sites that are opted out of OAI-SearchBot will not be shown in ChatGPT search answers, though can still appear as navigational links.OpenAI documentation, checked 2026-10-31

robots.txt allows it, but is it really getting through?

A firewall or CDN rule can reject OAI-SearchBot even when robots.txt welcomes it, and nothing in your CMS shows it. Our check sends a live request as OAI-SearchBot alongside a normal browser and a Googlebot control, so a bot-verification rule isn't mistaken for a block.

Other OpenAI agents