Glossary
OAI-SearchBot
In short: OAI-SearchBot is OpenAI's crawler for indexing pages that ChatGPT can surface and cite in search-enabled answers, separate from GPTBot's training role.
OAI-SearchBot is the user agent OpenAI uses to build the index behind ChatGPT search. When ChatGPT answers a question with live web results and lists sources, the candidate pages come from this index. It is distinct from GPTBot, which collects training data, and from ChatGPT-User, which fetches a page on demand when a user asks about it.
The distinction gives you a precise choice. If you want ChatGPT to be able to recommend you with a link to your own site, OAI-SearchBot must be allowed. You can allow it while disallowing GPTBot if you do not want your content used for training; the two rules are independent. A common mistake is a blanket "block AI bots" rule that removes you from search citations as well as from training, which is almost never what a business intends.
OpenAI publishes the IP ranges for OAI-SearchBot so you can confirm that a request claiming to be the bot is genuine, and the bot respects robots.txt. As with any crawler, a CDN firewall can block it silently, so check the live response, not just the file.
Seoptist's audit checks the OAI-SearchBot rule and live reachability, and tracks ChatGPT through the official OpenAI API with web search enabled so the citations it measures reflect that index.