engines
OAI-SearchBot
The OpenAI crawler that powers ChatGPT's web search retrieval — different from GPTBot (training).
Definition
OAI-SearchBot is OpenAI's RETRIEVAL crawler — the one that fetches pages when ChatGPT's web-search tool is invoked. It's distinct from GPTBot which crawls for TRAINING. Blocking OAI-SearchBot in robots.txt kills your ChatGPT citation eligibility; blocking GPTBot only blocks training (a separate decision).
Example
User-agent: OAI-SearchBot\nAllow: / (explicit allow ensures ChatGPT can cite you)How to optimize
Add 'User-agent: OAI-SearchBot' with 'Allow: /' to robots.txt. Confirm via VectorCite's AI-bot access signal. Choose separately whether to allow GPTBot (training).