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OpenAIChecked 29 Oct 2026

OAI-SearchBot

Finds the pages that ChatGPT search can show and link to.

Run by
OpenAI
Used for
Search and AI answers
Follows robots.txt
Yes
Shut out by
6% of top websites

What blocking it changes

The site's pages stop appearing in ChatGPT's search answers, though it can still appear as a plain link. OpenAI says changes take about 24 hours.

"Sites that are opted out of OAI-SearchBot will not be shown in ChatGPT search answers, though can still appear as navigational links."

OpenAI, read 29 Oct 2026
Figure 1How many shut out OAI-SearchBot while letting Googlebot in
Most visited websites6%42 of 669
S&P 500 companies0%2 of 410
From our two studies of 29 October 2026: the 669 most visited websites and the 410 S&P 500 companies whose robots.txt we could read. 87 of the websites and 29 of the companies name OAI-SearchBot in the file. The website study, the S&P 500 study.

The lines to copy

To shut it out
User-agent: OAI-SearchBot
Disallow: /
To let it in
User-agent: OAI-SearchBot
Allow: /

A crawler follows only the lines under the User-agent line that names it, and the lines under User-agent: * only when no line names it. So lines for one crawler do not change the rules for the others.

OpenAI publishes the addresses it crawls from, so a request can be checked against them: the list.

More from OpenAI

  • GPTBot Collects pages that may be used to train OpenAI's AI models.
  • ChatGPT-User Opens a page when someone asks ChatGPT, or a custom GPT, about it.