Block GPTBot but allow ChatGPT search?

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Published 12 November 2026 · by TrueTest

This page is about one decision: whether to let OpenAI train on your pages, be found in ChatGPT search, both or neither. What our check cannot do: it reads your robots.txt and tells you what it says for each of the 10 crawlers we check; it cannot see whether OpenAI has already used your pages, and it cannot make ChatGPT cite you. For the full crawler table see the robots.txt checker.

Check what my robots.txt allows See a full example first

Type your address into the box at the top of the WebAISEO page: the Readiness basics check reads one public page and its robots.txt, sitemap and llms.txt, takes a few seconds, needs no sign-up and is free. The paid audits are described on the WebAISEO page.

Which OpenAI bot does what?

OpenAI's documentation describes three. GPTBot crawls content that may be used to train its foundation models; disallowing it tells OpenAI the site's content should not be used for that training. OAI-SearchBot is used to show websites in ChatGPT's search features; sites that opt out of it are not shown in ChatGPT search answers. ChatGPT-User fetches a page when a person asks ChatGPT to; because a user starts it, OpenAI says robots.txt rules may not apply, and it is not used to decide what appears in search. OpenAI also says each setting is independent of the others, and that a search change can take about 24 hours after a robots.txt update.

What does each choice gain and lose?

Policy	Gains	Loses
A. Allow both	can be shown in ChatGPT search answers; your pages may inform future models	no say over training use
B. Block GPTBot, allow OAI-SearchBot	asks OpenAI not to train on the pages, while staying eligible for ChatGPT search	models may know less about your brand from your own words
C. Block both	keeps the pages out of training and out of ChatGPT search	you will not be shown in ChatGPT search answers

Policy B in robots.txt is two groups: User-agent: GPTBot with Disallow: /, and User-agent: OAI-SearchBot with Allow: /. A crawler follows the group with its own name, so the order of the groups does not matter.

How does our check score the three?

A blocked search crawler (OAI-SearchBot) is a fail worth 12 points, because it keeps you out of that engine's answers. A blocked training crawler (GPTBot) is only a warn worth 4 points, because blocking training is a legitimate choice. So policy B loses at most 2 points, and policy C loses the search points as well.

Is there a right answer?

No single one. A shop that wants to be recommended usually wants policy A or B. A publisher whose writing is the product may prefer B or C. Decide which you want, then make robots.txt say exactly that; the most common fault we see is a block nobody chose.

Sources (read 12 November 2026)

OpenAI: Overview of OpenAI crawlers

Outside companies change their documentation; we review these sources by 12 February 2027.

Questions people ask

Does blocking GPTBot remove me from ChatGPT?

Not from ChatGPT search, according to OpenAI: that uses OAI-SearchBot, and each setting is independent.

Can I stop ChatGPT-User with robots.txt?

OpenAI says robots.txt rules may not apply to it, because a person asked for the page. A firewall rule is a different tool with its own trade-offs.

How fast does a change apply?

OpenAI says about 24 hours for search after a robots.txt update.

Is the check free?

Yes, for one page with no sign-up.