What is OAI-SearchBot?
OAI-SearchBot is OpenAI's crawler for its ChatGPT search index — the answer/retrieval crawler that keeps pages available to be surfaced and cited in ChatGPT answers, as opposed to GPTBot, which crawls for model training. A companion user-agent, ChatGPT-User, fetches a page live when a user or agent follows a link inside a chat. For any brand that wants to be cited in ChatGPT, OAI-SearchBot and ChatGPT-User are the user-agents to allow in robots.txt; blocking them removes the brand from ChatGPT's cited answer surface even if the content is excellent. The separation of OAI-SearchBot from GPTBot is what lets a brand opt out of model training (block GPTBot) while staying fully citable in ChatGPT search (allow OAI-SearchBot) — the single most useful distinction in 2026 AI-crawler access control.
Key statistics
- OAI-SearchBot feeds the ChatGPT search index; ChatGPT-User fetches pages live on a user or agent action.
- Allow both to stay citable in ChatGPT answers; blocking them deletes the brand from that answer surface.
- Because it is separate from GPTBot, you can block training and still allow ChatGPT search citation.