SameDayDesk guide
The reason OpenAI documents is a robots.txt opt-out: if the site blocks OAI-SearchBot, OpenAI says it will not be shown in ChatGPT search answers, though it can still appear as a navigational link. Allowing GPTBot does not replace that. GPTBot is the training crawler. ChatGPT-User is only for visits a user triggers, robots.txt may not apply to it, and OpenAI says it is not used to decide what appears in Search.
Last checked: 2026-09-23.
| Check | What the primary source says |
|---|---|
| OAI-SearchBot in robots.txt | OpenAI's crawler overview says to allow OAI-SearchBot, and requests from its published IP ranges, if you want the site in ChatGPT search results. An opt-out means no ChatGPT search answers. The same page says a robots.txt update can take about 24 hours to be picked up. |
| GPTBot | Disallowing GPTBot is the signal that content should not train OpenAI's foundation models. It is independent of OAI-SearchBot. Blocking only GPTBot is not the Search opt-out. Allowing only GPTBot is not the Search opt-in. |
| ChatGPT-User | This agent visits a page when a person asks ChatGPT or a custom GPT to. OpenAI says it is not an automatic crawl, robots.txt rules may not apply, and it does not decide Search inclusion. |
| The page itself | OpenAI's crawler page does not say a particular schema file or llms.txt is required. If the answer is not in the response a fetcher receives, there is nothing on that response to quote. Confirm by viewing the URL, not only the rendered screen. |
OpenAI's crawler overview, checked 2026-09-23, does not say ChatGPT search answers are taken from Bing's index, and it does not give a percentage of citations that match any other search engine. Older copies of this guide repeated a third-party overlap figure. That figure is not an OpenAI rule, so it is not used here.
The same overview does not promise that an allowed bot will cite you. Allowance is eligibility for OpenAI's search crawl. It is not a rank.
Google documents a different path. AI Overviews and AI Mode, last updated 2025-12-10, use Google Search. A page has to be indexed and eligible for a snippet. There are no extra technical requirements, and robots.txt for Googlebot is the crawl control. Google-Extended, last updated 2026-07-14, does not decide Google Search inclusion.
Google's generative AI guide, last updated 2026-07-10, adds that a site must be included in Search generative AI features in Search Console to be eligible for those features, and that meeting the requirements still does not guarantee indexing or serving. Measure Google with the Search Console generative AI report that guide names. It also says llms.txt is ignored by Google Search, and that no third-party tool has Google's internal ranking or AI metrics.
The free readiness check can show whether the public robots.txt names these tokens. It cannot log into ChatGPT and prove a prompt cites you. When you want that prompt run and written down, use the audit. This guide does not set a price.
The AI Visibility Audit is the existing offer for that job. Scope and price stay on the offer page.
Open the AI Visibility Audit