OAI-SearchBot: user agent, IP ranges and robots.txt

OAI-SearchBot crawls the web so ChatGPT's search features can show and link to websites in answers. It is not used to train OpenAI's models.

Operator
OpenAI
Type
AI search · Indexes pages so an assistant can cite them in answers
robots.txt token
OAI-SearchBot
Follows robots.txt
Yes
IP list
https://openai.com/searchbot.json
Official docs
developers.openai.com

OAI-SearchBot user agent

User agent

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, so match on "OAI-SearchBot". Requests for robots.txt carry an extra "robots.txt;" marker before the URL.

How to block or allow OAI-SearchBot in robots.txt

OpenAI says sites that disallow OAI-SearchBot won't be shown in ChatGPT search answers, though they can still appear as navigational links. Changes take about 24 hours to apply.

Block OAI-SearchBot

User-agent: OAI-SearchBot
Disallow: /

Allow OAI-SearchBot

User-agent: OAI-SearchBot
Allow: /

Put the rules in /robots.txt at the root of each host. Check the result with our AI Crawler Checker, which also catches firewall and CDN blocks that robots.txt doesn't show.

Should you block OAI-SearchBot?

Allow it if you want to be cited in ChatGPT search. Blocking OAI-SearchBot is the main way sites accidentally disappear from ChatGPT answers. Check your CDN too: firewall "block AI bots" settings can block it even when robots.txt allows it.

How to verify real OAI-SearchBot traffic

Check the request IP against OpenAI's published OAI-SearchBot list.

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To check every request in your server log at once, use the free AI Bot Log Analyzer. It runs in your browser and flags requests that use a bot's name from outside its official IP list.

Frequently asked questions

What is OAI-SearchBot?

OAI-SearchBot crawls the web so ChatGPT's search features can show and link to websites in answers. It is not used to train OpenAI's models.

How do I block OAI-SearchBot?

Add "User-agent: OAI-SearchBot" followed by "Disallow: /" to your robots.txt. To block only part of the site, disallow those paths instead of "/". OpenAI says sites that disallow OAI-SearchBot won't be shown in ChatGPT search answers, though they can still appear as navigational links. Changes take about 24 hours to apply.

Is a request claiming to be OAI-SearchBot really from OpenAI?

Not necessarily: anyone can copy a user agent. Check the request IP against OpenAI's published OAI-SearchBot list.

How do I get my site into ChatGPT search?

Allow OAI-SearchBot in robots.txt and in your firewall or CDN, and make sure your main content is in the HTML rather than loaded only by JavaScript. Then it's down to relevance, just like classic search.

Checked against OpenAI's documentation on 2026-11-06. Vendors change user agents and policies, so confirm in the official docs before relying on them.

Related crawlers

Is OAI-SearchBot allowed on your site?

The free AI Crawler Checker tests robots.txt and firewall rules for 14 AI crawlers in one run.

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