OpenAI's search crawler. Sites opted out of it are not shown in ChatGPT search answers — allow it if you want citations.
Almost never block
OAI-SearchBot builds and refreshes the index behind OpenAI's AI answers. Blocking it is the most expensive mistake in AI SEO: you disappear from OpenAI citations while your training decision stays completely separate.
If you need to protect specific sections (pricing, docs), use path-scoped rules instead of a blanket Disallow: /.
User-agent: OAI-SearchBot Allow: /
User-agent: OAI-SearchBot Disallow: /
Official source Operator documentation — last verified against operator docs 2026-09-12
https://developers.openai.com/api/docs/bots
"Should you block it?" below is our own interpretation, not the operator's recommendation.
See whether OAI-SearchBot — and 39 other AI crawlers — can reach your site today.