What is OAI-SearchBot? OpenAI's AI crawler
OAI-SearchBot is the crawler OpenAI uses to surface websites in ChatGPT's search features.
27 of the 389 major websites we measure block OAI-SearchBot in robots.txt (7%), making it number 26 of the 30 AI crawlers we track for how often it is blocked. 73 of those sites name it directly in their robots.txt; the rest are covered by a wildcard rule.
Key facts
| Fact | Detail |
|---|---|
| Operator | OpenAI |
| Used for | ChatGPT search |
| Type | Search index. Decides whether a site can appear in that product's AI search answers. |
| robots.txt token | OAI-SearchBot |
| Operator's documentation | Read it here |
What blocking OAI-SearchBot does
OpenAI says sites opted out of OAI-SearchBot will not be shown in ChatGPT search answers, though they can still appear as navigational links.
How to allow or block OAI-SearchBot
Add one of these groups to the robots.txt file at the root of your domain. It is a stated preference that well-behaved crawlers read, not an enforcement mechanism.
User-agent: OAI-SearchBot Disallow: /
User-agent: OAI-SearchBot Allow: /
OAI-SearchBot user agent string
The string OpenAI documents. Version numbers can change, so match on the name.
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
How to verify a request is really OAI-SearchBot
Anyone can put a crawler's name in a user agent string, so the name alone proves nothing. OpenAI publishes the addresses OAI-SearchBot uses: openai.com/searchbot.json. Check a request's source address against that list.
How to whitelist OAI-SearchBot in a firewall or CDN
robots.txt only states a preference. A firewall, CDN or bot protection service can still refuse the request, and the crawler then gets an error even though robots.txt allows it.
- Check that no group in your robots.txt blocks it, using the rule above.
- Add an allow rule in your firewall or CDN that matches the name and the published IP addresses. Keep the rule narrow, because anyone can copy a name.
- Check your server logs for a 200 response from OAI-SearchBot afterwards.
On Cloudflare, also check AI Crawler and Agent access policies, which can block search, agent and training traffic across a site.
Why OAI-SearchBot gets a 403 or 405 error
A 403 means the server refused the request, which usually points to a firewall or bot rule. A 405 means the server refused the request's method, so check any rule that only permits certain methods. A crawler that obeys robots.txt won't request a page it is told to avoid, so an error in your logs points to your server's configuration. To stop it deliberately at the server, this nginx rule returns a 403:
if ($http_user_agent ~* "OAI-SearchBot") {
return 403;
}Which sites recently changed their rules for OAI-SearchBot?
| Date first seen | Site | Change |
|---|---|---|
| 24 August 2026 | metacritic.com | Started blocking |
See the full change log.
Who blocks OAI-SearchBot, by sector
| Sector | Sites measured | Blocking | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| News publishers | 44 | 16 | 36% |
| Social and media platforms | 28 | 5 | 18% |
| Technology media | 25 | 4 | 16% |
| E-commerce and retail | 19 | 1 | 5% |
| Finance and business media | 29 | 1 | 3% |
| AI companies | 28 | 0 | 0% |
| Developer references | 34 | 0 | 0% |
| Government and institutions | 19 | 0 | 0% |
| Health publishers | 16 | 0 | 0% |
| Hosting and infrastructure | 23 | 0 | 0% |
| Reference and research | 25 | 0 | 0% |
| SaaS platforms | 54 | 0 | 0% |
| SEO and marketing tools | 26 | 0 | 0% |
| Travel | 19 | 0 | 0% |
Sites blocking OAI-SearchBot
amazon.com, asahi.com, bbc.co.uk, buzzfeednews.com, cnbc.com, cnn.com, dw.com, economist.com, france24.com, globeandmail.com, huffpost.com, imdb.com, lifehacker.com, mashable.com, metacritic.com, nbcnews.com, nytimes.com, pcmag.com, pinterest.com, quora.com, reddit.com, smh.com.au, spiegel.de, telegraph.co.uk, theage.com.au, usatoday.com, zdnet.com.
Sites that allow OAI-SearchBot by name
academia.edu, airbnb.com, amplitude.com, barrons.com, bestbuy.com, bloomberg.com, corriere.it, deel.com, delta.com, descript.com, digitaltrends.com, disneyplus.com, docusign.com, ebay.com, expedia.com, fastcompany.com, figma.com, flickr.com, forbes.com, frase.io, gamma.app, github.com, hackernoon.com, hulu.com, inc.com, instacart.com, investopedia.com, jasper.ai, klaviyo.com, marketwatch.com, monday.com, netflix.com, netlify.com, omio.com, render.com, reuters.com, sciencedirect.com, seranking.com, sky.com, soundcloud.com, and 9 more in the full dataset.
Other OpenAI crawlers
GPTBot (model training), ChatGPT-User (on-demand fetch).
See all 30 AI crawlers, the rule change log or the full study. Being reachable is only the first step: how AI search engines choose what to cite covers the rest.
Cite this data
You are welcome to quote or republish these figures. Please credit IndexHalo with a link to this page (CC BY 4.0). All our datasets are on the data page.
IndexHalo. "OAI-SearchBot block rate across major websites." Measured 3 November 2026. https://www.indexhalo.com/ai-crawlers/oai-searchbot/
<a href="https://www.indexhalo.com/ai-crawlers/oai-searchbot/">OAI-SearchBot block rate across major websites, IndexHalo</a>