OpenAI Crawlers and User Agents Guide

What are OpenAI User Agents?

OpenAI uses three main crawler user agents—GPTBot for AI training, OAI-SearchBot for search functionality, and ChatGPT-User for direct user requests—each serving distinct purposes and controllable through robots.txt directives. Understanding these user agents is essential for website owners who want to optimize their content for OpenAI's systems or control how their content is accessed.

OpenAI uses several different user agents and web crawlers to interact with web content for various purposes, from training AI models to providing search results in ChatGPT. Understanding these user agents is crucial for website owners who want to optimize their content for OpenAI's systems or control how their content is accessed.

How Can I Identify OpenAI User Agents?

OpenAI identifies itself with specific user agents when accessing web content. Here are the known OpenAI user agents:

GPTBot

Mozilla/5.0 AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko); compatible; GPTBot/1.1; +https://openai.com/gptbot

This user agent is used for crawling content that may be used in training OpenAI's generative AI foundation models.

Published IP addresses: https://openai.com/gptbot.json

OAI-SearchBot

Mozilla/5.0 AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko); compatible; OAI-SearchBot/1.0; +https://openai.com/searchbot

This user agent is used for search functionality in ChatGPT's search features. It is not used to crawl content for training AI models.

Published IP addresses: https://openai.com/searchbot.json

ChatGPT-User

Mozilla/5.0 AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko); compatible; ChatGPT-User/1.0; +https://openai.com/bot

This user agent is used when users ask ChatGPT or a Custom GPT to visit a web page. It's not used for automatic crawling or AI training.

Published IP addresses: https://openai.com/chatgpt-user.json

How Does OpenAI Access Web Content?

OpenAI accesses web content in several ways:

AI model training - GPTBot crawls content that may be used to train generative AI models
Search functionality - OAI-SearchBot indexes content to provide search results in ChatGPT
Direct user requests - ChatGPT-User accesses specific URLs when requested by users

Note: For search results, it can take approximately 24 hours from a site's robots.txt update for OpenAI's systems to adjust.

How Can I Control OpenAI's Access to My Content?

Website owners can control how OpenAI accesses their content through:

Robots.txt Configuration

You can use the following directives in your robots.txt file:

# Allow search but prevent training
User-agent: GPTBot
Disallow: /

User-agent: OAI-SearchBot
Allow: /

User-agent: ChatGPT-User
Allow: /

# Block all OpenAI access
User-agent: GPTBot
Disallow: /

User-agent: OAI-SearchBot
Disallow: /

User-agent: ChatGPT-User
Disallow: /

How Can I Optimize Content for OpenAI?

To ensure your content performs well when accessed by OpenAI systems:

Use clear, well-structured HTML with proper semantic markup
Ensure content is accessible and doesn't rely solely on JavaScript for rendering
Provide comprehensive information with factual accuracy
Include relevant metadata and schema markup
Consider which parts of your site should be available for AI training versus search only

How Can I Track OpenAI Visits?

With xseek, you can track when and how OpenAI accesses your content:

Monitor OpenAI user agent visits in your analytics dashboard
Track which content is being accessed by different OpenAI crawlers
Analyze how your content appears in ChatGPT responses
Receive notifications about changes in OpenAI crawling patterns

Frequently Asked Questions

What are the official OpenAI crawler user agents and how can I identify them?

OpenAI uses three main crawler user agents: GPTBot (GPTBot/1.1) for training AI models, OAI-SearchBot (OAI-SearchBot/1.0) for search functionality, and ChatGPT-User (ChatGPT-User/1.0) for direct user requests. All can be verified through their published IP ranges at openai.com/gptbot.json, openai.com/searchbot.json, and openai.com/chatgpt-user.json.

How do I block OpenAI's GPTBot from crawling my website?

To block GPTBot, add the following to your robots.txt file:

User-agent: GPTBot
Disallow: /

This prevents OpenAI's crawler from accessing your content for AI training. You can also block specific IP ranges published by OpenAI for more comprehensive control.

What's the difference between GPTBot and OAI-SearchBot user agents?

GPTBot is used for collecting training data for OpenAI's AI models, while OAI-SearchBot is specifically for retrieving web content for ChatGPT's browsing feature. They have different IP ranges and can be controlled separately through robots.txt directives.

How do I track OpenAI crawlers?

You can track OpenAI crawlers using xseek's AI bot tracking feature. With xseek, you can:

Monitor all OpenAI bot visits (GPTBot, OAI-SearchBot, and ChatGPT-User)
See which URLs they are accessing in real-time
Analyze crawling patterns and trends
Receive notifications about changes in OpenAI crawling behavior
Track how your content appears in ChatGPT responses

This helps you understand how OpenAI is interacting with your content and optimize your AEO (Answer Engine Optimization) strategy. Get started with xseek to begin tracking OpenAI crawlers today.

What Other AI User Agents Should I Know About?

Learn about other AI user agents to better manage your website's interaction with AI systems:

Claude User Agents - Anthropic's Claude AI assistant
Perplexity User Agents - Perplexity AI search engine
Deepseek User Agents - Deepseek AI
Llama User Agents - Meta's Llama AI
Bing AI User Agents - Bing AI

Source: Information in this guide is sourced from OpenAI's official documentation.

OpenAI User Agents