OAI-SearchBot vs GPTBot: Why the Difference Matters
A practical guide to OpenAI crawler controls for search discovery and model-training crawling.
OAI-SearchBot
OpenAI documents OAI-SearchBot as the crawler used for surfacing websites in ChatGPT search. Publishers can manage its access through robots.txt.
GPTBot
OpenAI documents GPTBot separately for crawling content that may be used to improve generative AI foundation models. Blocking GPTBot is therefore a separate policy decision from allowing OAI-SearchBot for search discovery.
What access means
Allowing a crawler does not guarantee inclusion, ranking, citation or traffic. It only removes one possible access barrier.
Official reference
See OpenAI’s current crawler documentation at developers.openai.com/api/docs/bots before changing production crawler policy.