How to Check If ChatGPT Can See Your Site
Three ways to check whether your site is visible to AI search: the quick robots.txt check, the real-fetch check, and what to do when you find a problem.
You've probably asked yourself: "Is my site showing up in ChatGPT / Perplexity / Claude answers?" Before you can fix AI visibility, you need to know whether AI crawlers can even reach you.
1. The robots.txt check (2 minutes)
Your robots.txt controls which AI crawlers can access your site. The critical thing to look for: are the retrieval crawlers (OAI-SearchBot, Claude-SearchBot, PerplexityBot) accidentally blocked? These are the ones that get you cited. Blocking them removes you from AI answers.
2. The real-fetch check (5 minutes)
Simulate what an AI crawler sees:
curl -A "OAI-SearchBot/1.0" -I https://yoursite.com
curl -A "GPTBot/1.0" -I https://yoursite.com
curl -A "PerplexityBot" -I https://yoursite.com200 OK = accessible · 403/4xx = blocked · 503/challenge = your CDN/WAF is interfering.
3. Use a checker that tests many bots at once
Manual curls test one crawler at a time — and there are 24+ that matter, changing weekly. A tool that checks your robots.txt against the full roster in one shot shows you the complete picture instantly.
Found a problem? Fix it, then re-check
Edit robots.txt, add an explicit Allow for the retrieval crawlers you need, and re-run the check to confirm the fix took effect. That verify loop is the difference between guessing and knowing.
Run the full 24-crawler check now: AI Crawler Visibility Checker.