# OAI-SearchBot

## Quick answer

OAI-SearchBot is OpenAI's crawler for surfacing websites in ChatGPT's search features, the function that lets ChatGPT cite current web pages. It is separate from GPTBot, which gathers training data, so blocking one does not automatically affect the other at all.

## What it does

OAI-SearchBot crawls the web specifically to surface websites within ChatGPT's search features, the function that lets ChatGPT pull in and cite current information from the web rather than relying only on what it learned during training. OpenAI states that sites opted out of OAI-SearchBot will not be shown in ChatGPT search answers, making the effect of a disallow rule direct and specific to this one feature. OAI-SearchBot respects robots.txt and OpenAI publishes its IP ranges at a public URL, so a site can verify incoming traffic before deciding how to treat it. This bot is documented separately from GPTBot, so disallowing OAI-SearchBot has no effect on whether GPTBot may still use a site's content for training. MarketHQ tracks how brands appear in ChatGPT's answers as part of its wider AI visibility tracking across ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, Grok, and DeepSeek.

## Facts

- Operator: OpenAI
- Robots token: OAI-SearchBot
- User agent string(s): 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
- Purpose: search-index
- Respects robots.txt: yes
- IP ranges: https://openai.com/searchbot.json

## Should you block it?

Disallowing OAI-SearchBot removes a site from ChatGPT's search answers specifically, which matters a great deal to a brand that wants to show up when someone asks ChatGPT a question that triggers a web search about its category or compares it to competitors. OpenAI is direct about the effect: opted-out sites simply will not be shown in those search answers, though a page can apparently still appear elsewhere as a plain navigational link rather than a cited search result. For a brand actively trying to improve how it appears in AI answers, including through visibility tracking tools like MarketHQ, leaving OAI-SearchBot allowed is usually the better choice, since it is the main lever controlling ChatGPT's search-based citations. A site that only wants to prevent GPTBot from using its content for training, without affecting search visibility, should disallow GPTBot specifically rather than OAI-SearchBot, since the two bots are controlled independently.

## How to block it

Add this to robots.txt to block OAI-SearchBot:

User-agent: OAI-SearchBot
Disallow: /

This rule only controls ChatGPT's search feature citations; GPTBot, OpenAI's separate training crawler, is controlled by its own rule.

## FAQ

### What happens if I block OAI-SearchBot?

OpenAI says sites opted out of OAI-SearchBot will not be shown in ChatGPT's search answers.

### Is OAI-SearchBot the same as GPTBot?

No. OAI-SearchBot surfaces sites in ChatGPT search features; GPTBot is used for training and is controlled separately.

### Can I verify OAI-SearchBot traffic?

Yes. OpenAI publishes OAI-SearchBot's IP ranges at openai.com/searchbot.json.

## Sources

- OAI-SearchBot surfaces websites in ChatGPT's search features. Source: https://developers.openai.com/api/docs/bots
- Sites that opt out of OAI-SearchBot stop appearing in ChatGPT search answers. Source: https://developers.openai.com/api/docs/bots