# What is OAI-SearchBot, ChatGPT's search crawler > What OAI-SearchBot is, the crawler OpenAI uses to show sites in ChatGPT search, what happens if you block it, and how to verify its visits. URL: https://clione.ai/glossary/oai-searchbot/ Lang: en OAI-SearchBot is the name OpenAI's search [crawler](/glossary/web-crawler/) gives your server. "OAI" is OpenAI, and "SearchBot" says what it is for: it does not train models or answer a specific person's question, it **collects the pages that can appear in [ChatGPT Search](/glossary/chatgpt-search/) answers**. For a store it is the OpenAI agent that decides whether you can show up in those answers, and it is easy to block by accident, tucked inside a list of "AI bots" copied from another site. ## How it works OpenAI describes its crawlers on a single page, and says this about OAI-SearchBot: it is used to surface websites in the results of ChatGPT's search features, and **sites that opt out of it will not be shown in ChatGPT search answers**, though they can still appear as navigational links.[^openai-bots] It is an exclusion rule: the documentation says what happens if you block it, and does not promise that letting it in leads to an answer. The exclusion happens in [robots.txt](/glossary/robots-txt/), and OpenAI stresses that **each agent is managed separately**: you can allow OAI-SearchBot to appear in search results and block [GPTBot](/glossary/gptbot/) to signal that crawled content should not be used to train its models. If you allow both, OpenAI may use a single crawl for both purposes. And for search, it estimates **about 24 hours** from the moment you change your robots.txt until its systems adjust.[^openai-bots] The request arrives with this [user agent](/glossary/user-agent/), in the version OpenAI documents as of October 2026:[^openai-bots] ```text 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 ``` The string starts like a desktop browser's, so **a filter that looks only for "Mozilla" or "Chrome" will not tell it apart**. What identifies it is `OAI-SearchBot`. In robots.txt that name is enough: the standard says the crawler looks for the group that names it, without regard to case, and if it finds none, follows the `User-agent: *` group.[^rfc9309] Because anyone can type that name into a request, OpenAI publishes the IP addresses it crawls from at `openai.com/searchbot.json`.[^openai-bots] The file carries a creation date and a list of network prefixes: the version we read on October 6, 2026 was dated January 2, 2026 and held 40 IPv4 prefixes.[^searchbot-ips] A visit whose IP is not on that list does not come from any of the addresses OpenAI declares for its search agent. Crawling is not the only way your products reach ChatGPT. OpenAI also takes in [structured product feeds](/glossary/chatgpt-product-feed/) through [ACP](/glossary/acp/), its [agentic commerce](/glossary/agentic-commerce/) protocol, so ChatGPT can index and show products with up-to-date [price and availability](/glossary/price-and-availability/).[^openai-commerce] On Shopify, blocking AI crawlers in robots.txt or at the network only affects what is discovered on the open web, and does not stop the product data [Shopify Catalog](/glossary/shopify-catalog/) sends to any [agentic storefronts](/glossary/agentic-storefronts/) you have turned on.[^shopify-robots] ## In a store A ceramics store copies a list from a forum to "protect itself from AI" and pastes it into its robots.txt. This is a **fictional example**: ```text User-agent: GPTBot User-agent: OAI-SearchBot User-agent: ClaudeBot Disallow: / ``` The intent was not to hand the catalog over to train models. The effect is different: with OAI-SearchBot in that group, **the store disappears from ChatGPT's search answers** as soon as OpenAI reads the change.[^openai-bots] The version that does what was wanted takes OAI-SearchBot out of the group and leaves it under the general rules, which still protect the cart: ```text User-agent: * Disallow: /cart Disallow: /checkout User-agent: GPTBot User-agent: ClaudeBot Disallow: / ``` Giving it its own group with `Allow: /` looks more explicit, but it has a cost: a crawler that finds its own group stops reading the asterisk group,[^rfc9309] so it could also request the cart and checkout, and multiply [faceted navigation](/glossary/faceted-navigation/) URLs and [duplicate content](/glossary/duplicate-content/) if the general group was blocking them. On BigCommerce there is another layer: the platform applies its own rules to AI and high-volume crawlers, with a 10-second delay, which you only see if you open the published file.[^bigcommerce-robots] **OpenAI's three agents are not interchangeable.** Blocking GPTBot does not take you out of ChatGPT search, and blocking OAI-SearchBot does not cut ChatGPT off from your site: when a person asks for something in ChatGPT, the visit can be made by [ChatGPT-User](/glossary/chatgpt-user/), and because someone started it, **robots.txt rules may not apply**.[^openai-bots] Each agent is decided separately, by its own name. ## How to check it 1. **Open `yourdomain.com/robots.txt` and look for a group that names OAI-SearchBot.** If there is one, read what it blocks; if not, see what the asterisk group says about the path of your product pages.[^rfc9309] 2. **On BigCommerce, read the published file, not the settings screen**, because the rules for AI bots only appear there.[^bigcommerce-robots] 3. **Search your server or CDN logs for OAI-SearchBot** and note which pages it requests. 4. **Check each IP against `openai.com/searchbot.json`** from the same day.[^searchbot-ips] 5. **If you changed something, wait at least a day** before looking at ChatGPT: OpenAI estimates about 24 hours for its search to reflect the change.[^openai-bots] ## Related concept: ChatGPT-User OAI-SearchBot crawls on its own so your pages can appear in ChatGPT search. ChatGPT-User does not crawl: it visits a page when a person asks a question in ChatGPT, and OpenAI warns that, since someone initiated the visit, robots.txt may not apply.[^openai-bots] You will see both in your logs, and they are worth reading separately: **one says your store is on search's radar; the other, that someone just asked about something you carry**. To keep going, the guide to [what an AI crawler sees in your store](/guides/what-an-ai-crawler-sees/) goes agent by agent through what each one reads, and the [reading path](/learn/crawling-and-indexing/) for this topic lays out the rest of the terms.