Question

What is OAI-SearchBot?

Updated June 19, 2026

OAI-SearchBot is OpenAI's crawler that indexes pages for ChatGPT search. Allowing it is what makes your content discoverable and citable in ChatGPT's web answers — distinct from GPTBot (training) and ChatGPT-User (live user fetch).

Why it matters for visibility

• It builds the index ChatGPT search draws on.
• Allow it if you want to be cited in ChatGPT answers.
• Blocking it removes you from ChatGPT search, even if GPTBot is allowed.

Allow it

User-agent: OAI-SearchBot
Allow: /

Confirm visits

grep -i 'OAI-SearchBot' /var/log/your-access.log | awk '{print $7}' | sort | uniq -c | sort -nr | head

Related pages: should I allow OAI-SearchBot, check OAI-SearchBot visits, what is GPTBot.

Use the GEO checklist