Is My Site Visible to ChatGPT? A 5-Minute Audit
Three fast checks to see whether ChatGPT can access and cite your site — and what to fix if it can't. No tools needed for the first two.
Wondering whether your site shows up in ChatGPT? Before you can improve citations, you need to know whether ChatGPT can even reach you. Here's a 5-minute audit.
Check 1: Is OAI-SearchBot allowed? (2 min)
OAI-SearchBot is the crawler behind ChatGPT Search citations. Test it from your terminal:
curl -A "OAI-SearchBot/1.0" -I https://yoursite.com200 OK = reachable · 403/4xx = blocked · 503 = CDN/WAF interference. Also check your robots.txt for User-agent: OAI-SearchBot or a wildcard Disallow: / that would block it.
Check 2: Are you already cited? (2 min)
Open ChatGPT and ask something your site should answer — or simply ask "what do you know about [your brand/domain]?" If ChatGPT answers from your content and links to you, you're cited. If it mentions you without citing, your content is known but the crawler isn't fetching it. If it knows nothing, you're likely invisible.
Check 3: Full crawler audit (1 min)
Manual curls only test one crawler at a time — and there are 24+ that matter, plus weekly changes. A full scan checks your robots.txt against the entire roster and flags accidental blocks, including the "blocked training but blocked retrieval too" trap. Run the free 24-crawler check →
If you're invisible
- Blocked? Add explicit
Allowfor OAI-SearchBot and ChatGPT-User, keep your training-crawler decision separate. - Allowed but not cited? That's a content problem, not a crawler problem — your content may not be structured for AI retrieval (clear headings, direct answers, entity-friendly structure).
- Want to stay on top of it? Crawlers change weekly — a one-time check goes stale. Continuous monitoring emails you the moment anything changes. Try the checker and subscribe.