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Open dataWhere AI sends people, across more than 6,000 sites

OpenAIAI search crawler

OAI-SearchBot

OAI-SearchBot is an OpenAI search crawler for indexing pages that can appear in ChatGPT search results.

Needed to be found and cited in ChatGPT.

Get the robots.txt ruleOpenAI documentation
Is OAI-SearchBot allowed on your site?3 OpenAI bots

Reads your live robots.txt and applies the same rules these crawlers use. Nothing is stored.

robots.txt token
OAI-SearchBot
Follows robots.txt
Yes, documented
How to verify it
Published IP ranges
Last checked
18 August 2026

Should you block OAI-SearchBot?

Not if you want to be found in ChatGPT. Disallowing OAI-SearchBot can reduce search discovery and citation eligibility. Allowing it does not guarantee indexing, ranking, or citation.

What blocking each OpenAI bot does
OpenAI botJobIf you block it
GPTBotTrainingDisallowing GPTBot expresses an opt-out for the potential training use covered by that crawler. ChatGPT search uses the separate OAI-SearchBot control.
OAI-SearchBotThis pageSearchDisallowing OAI-SearchBot can reduce search discovery and citation eligibility. Allowing it does not guarantee indexing, ranking, or citation.
ChatGPT AgentUser fetchA verified request represents task automation on a user’s behalf, not background search indexing or training crawling.
ChatGPT-UserUser fetchA matching request is consistent with a user-triggered fetch, not broad search indexing or training. It does not reveal the conversation or prove citation.
OAI-AdsBotOtherBlocking it can prevent an ad landing page from being reviewed or matched to relevant ad opportunities. It does not affect organic ChatGPT search or model training.

From OpenAI’s documentationOpenAI says sites that opt out of OAI-SearchBot will not appear in ChatGPT search answers, though they can still show as navigational links.

robots.txt
User-agent: OAI-SearchBot
Disallow: /

Asks OAI-SearchBot not to crawl any page. Other OpenAI bots are unaffected. Add it to the robots.txt file at the root of your site, above any wider rules.

Ignored robots.txt?

Allowing OAI-SearchBot creates the possibility of retrieval. To find out whether ChatGPT actually cites or recommends you, track your ChatGPT mentions over time.

To see why OAI-SearchBot access is worth checking rather than assuming, read a page that answered 200 to browsers and 404 to crawlers, and the citation that followed the fix.

Spot it in your logs.

Match the name, then check where the request came from. Anyone can copy a user-agent. Search your own logs for OAI-SearchBot.

User-agentsource
Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/131.0.0.0 Safari/537.36; compatible; OAI-SearchBot/1.4; +https://openai.com/searchbot

Version numbers change. Match the highlighted name, not the whole string.

  1. 1

    Match the name

    Search your server or CDN log for OAI-SearchBot, case-insensitive. A match is a clue, not proof.

  2. 2

    Check the published IP ranges

    Compare the request’s source with the list OpenAI publishes. Anything outside it is not OpenAI. openai.com/searchbot.json

Is this really OAI-SearchBot?

Published addresses

Paste an address that claims to be OAI-SearchBot. It is checked against OpenAI’s published list. Nothing is stored.

Check any crawler’s address

Serve the content in HTML

The cited operator material does not verify JavaScript rendering. Serve useful HTML before client-side JavaScript where possible.

How active is OAI-SearchBot?

Measured across the sites connected to Trakkr, 27 July 2026 to 25 October 2026.

84%

of connected sites saw OAI-SearchBot in the four weeks to 25 October 2026. That is 87 of 104.

100%75%50%25%83%
OAI-SearchBot visited between 69% and 84% of connected sites each week from 27 July 2026 to 25 October 2026.

Share of connected sites it visited each week

Rank by reach
1 of 26
Typical site, per week
246 requests
Sites reached, 13 weeks
108 of 135

Most widespread AI crawlers

Share of connected sites each one visited, last four weeks.

  1. 1OAI-SearchBot84%
  2. 2ClaudeBot84%
  3. 3GPTBot67%
  4. 4Amazonbot61%
  5. 5ChatGPT-User56%
  6. 6PerplexityBot56%
  7. 7Applebot51%
  8. 8Bytespider48%
All 26 measured crawlers
How this is measured

Finalized daily crawler summaries from sites connected to Trakkr, grouped by the crawler named in each request. Trakkr’s own site is excluded. A site counts as reached in a week when it logged at least one request from OAI-SearchBot. The typical figure is the median weekly requests among the sites it reached.

  • This is a sample of connected sites, not the whole web.
  • A matching user-agent does not prove the named operator sent the request.
  • Requests are not unique pages, training use or citations.
  • Crawlers seen on fewer than 10 sites are not shown. Classic search crawlers such as Googlebot are not collected on every site, so they are left out.

Questions, answered.

OAI-SearchBot is an OpenAI search crawler for indexing pages that can appear in ChatGPT search results.

Sources.

Officially documented. Operator facts and Trakkr’s measurements keep separate dates.

  1. [1]
    OpenAI crawler documentation

    Officially documented · checked 18 August 2026

    developers.openai.com/api/docs/bots

First verified 18 August 2026. Last source check 18 August 2026. Activity measured to 25 October 2026.

All AI crawlers

See which AI crawlers read your site.

Trakkr shows which bots, OAI-SearchBot included, visit which pages each day, and whether the answers they feed mention you.

14-day free trial. Cancel anytime.