OAI-SearchBot
OpenAI operates OAI-SearchBot, a crawler that finds websites to show in ChatGPT's search results. Site owners control it with the robots.txt token OAI-SearchBot, which OpenAI says the bot honors. Site owners verify it against the published IP range list at openai.com/searchbot.json; OpenAI documents no reverse-DNS method. Sites opted out are not shown in ChatGPT search answers.
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/searchbotWhat OAI-SearchBot does
In server logs the bot identifies itself with a Chrome-style user agent ending in "compatible; OAI-SearchBot/1.4; +https://openai.com/searchbot". OpenAI says the version number can change. When the bot fetches robots.txt it may add a "robots.txt" marker to the same string, so a log filter that matches only the exact example will miss those requests. OpenAI describes the visits as search work, collecting pages so ChatGPT's search features can list them. OpenAI publishes the bot's IP ranges in the file searchbot.json.
Allowing OAI-SearchBot keeps a site eligible to appear in ChatGPT search answers. OpenAI states that sites opted out will not be shown in those answers, though they can still appear as navigational links. The robots.txt setting is independent from GPTBot, so a site may allow OAI-SearchBot while disallowing GPTBot. OpenAI adds that if both are allowed it may use the results from one crawl for both use cases. After a robots.txt change, OpenAI says its search systems can take around 24 hours to adjust.
OpenAI's recommendation for site owners is to allow OAI-SearchBot in robots.txt and to allow requests from the published IP ranges. The range file is a JSON object with a creationTime field and a prefixes array of ipv4Prefix entries, so a site owner can refresh a firewall or allowlist from it directly. OpenAI does not document whether the bot executes JavaScript, and it does not document a reverse-DNS check, so IP matching is the only verification method it describes.
Operator note. OpenAI says the version number in the user-agent string may change, and when fetching robots.txt it may send a user-agent with an added "robots.txt" marker: "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; robots.txt; +https://openai.com/searchbot". Robots.txt settings are independent, so a site can allow OAI-SearchBot while disallowing GPTBot; if both are allowed, OpenAI "may use the results from just one crawl for both use cases". The documentation adds: "For search results, please note it can take ~24 hours from a site's robots.txt update for our systems to adjust." The documentation does not say whether OAI-SearchBot executes JavaScript.
Controlling OAI-SearchBot with robots.txt
Use the token OAI-SearchBot in robots.txt. OpenAI documents that OAI-SearchBot honors robots.txt directives.
User-agent: OAI-SearchBot
Disallow: /User-agent: OAI-SearchBot
Allow: /Verifying a request is really OAI-SearchBot
Anyone can put OAI-SearchBot in a User-Agent header. OpenAI publishes IP ranges for OAI-SearchBot at https://openai.com/searchbot.json. The documentation says: "we recommend allowing OAI-SearchBot in your site's robots.txt file and allowing requests from our published IP ranges below." No reverse-DNS method is documented.
OpenAI publishes a machine-readable list. Our probe read it on 2026-09-06; the file's own creation time was 2026-01-02.
- Prefixes
- 35
- IPv4
- 35
- IPv6
- 0
First entries at fetch time: 104.210.140.128/28, 135.234.64.0/24, 172.182.193.224/28
SHA-256 of the fetched body: e757b3ed5b84ac71976c02f17d9a77385e7acaf5b50e17c7b60f7e5a9876f102
Common questions
Should I block OAI-SearchBot?
That depends on whether you want pages listed in ChatGPT search. OpenAI says sites that opt out of OAI-SearchBot are not shown in ChatGPT search answers, though they can still appear as navigational links. Blocking it does not change your GPTBot setting; OpenAI treats the two robots.txt tokens independently.
How do I verify OAI-SearchBot?
Check the request's source IP against the list OpenAI publishes at https://openai.com/searchbot.json. The file's prefixes array holds ipv4Prefix entries. OpenAI documents no reverse-DNS hostname for the bot, so a matching user agent from an address outside the list fails verification.
Does OAI-SearchBot run JavaScript?
OpenAI's documentation does not say. The bot carries a Chrome-style user agent string, but that string alone does not tell you whether the bot renders pages. If your pages depend on client-side rendering, the documentation gives no assurance that the crawler will see that content.
Sources
Every fact on this page was checked against OpenAI's own documentation, listed below, and re-checked by a second reviewer before publication. Reviewed September 2026.
Related crawlers
This registry documents how operators describe their own bots so site owners can identify and control them. It does not publish third-party IP lists or guess at undocumented behaviour. To see how your own site responds to automated visitors, the bot detection scanner reads a URL's live response and names the protection it finds.