Glossary
What is OAI-SearchBot?
OAI-SearchBot is OpenAI's crawler for ChatGPT's search features. It finds and indexes pages so ChatGPT can show them as sources and links in answers. OpenAI says it isn't used to train models. Sites that block it won't be shown in ChatGPT search answers, though they may still appear as plain links.
Why it matters
ChatGPT search answers questions with sources. To be one of those sources, your pages need to be reachable by OAI-SearchBot. Of OpenAI's bots, it's the one most directly tied to AI visibility in ChatGPT.
robots.txt
Allowing it (or not mentioning it) is the default. A common setup for sites that want search visibility but not training:
User-agent: GPTBot
Disallow: /
User-agent: OAI-SearchBot
Allow: /
OpenAI notes that changes can take about a day to take effect for search.
Check your CDN too
Some CDN bot settings block AI crawlers broadly. If ChatGPT never cites you, check both robots.txt and your CDN or firewall rules for OAI-SearchBot.
Example
A founder searches ChatGPT for her product category and sees competitors cited, never her site. Her robots.txt allows everything, but her CDN's AI bot blocking is on. Turning it off for OAI-SearchBot gets her pages cited within weeks.
FAQ
Does OAI-SearchBot train models?
OpenAI says content crawled by OAI-SearchBot isn't used for training.
How fast do robots.txt changes apply?
OpenAI says roughly 24 hours for search.
Is ChatGPT-User the same bot?
No. ChatGPT-User fetches pages when a user asks ChatGPT to visit them.
How do I verify OAI-SearchBot traffic?
Compare source IPs with the ranges OpenAI publishes; user agents alone can be faked.