OpenAI’s 2026 guidance separates search visibility, model training, user-requested visits, and product-feed indexing. Allowing OAI-SearchBot supports ChatGPT Search inclusion; GPTBot can remain blocked independently.
-
Search inclusion — OAI-SearchBot: “A webmaster can allow OAI-SearchBot in order to appear in search results while disallowing GPTBot.” ![]()
-
Training — GPTBot: GPTBot controls whether content may be crawled for training OpenAI’s generative models; its robots.txt setting is independent of OAI-SearchBot. ![]()
-
User-requested access — ChatGPT-User: This user agent represents visits initiated by a ChatGPT user rather than automatic search indexing. The crawler documentation is the authoritative reference, but the available search extract did not expose a complete exact quote for this agent. ![]()
-
Merchant eligibility: “Any website or merchant can appear in ChatGPT search.” ![]()
-
Product feeds: “To make your products discoverable inside ChatGPT, merchants provide a structured product feed file that OpenAI ingests and indexes.” ![]()
-
Feed access in 2026: “Onboarding product feeds in ChatGPT is currently available to approved partners.”