When ChatGPT searches
For questions about current information, prices, local providers or comparisons, ChatGPT can search the web instead of answering only from what the model learned in training. Users can also ask it to search. The answer then lists its sources with links.
Which bots are involved
OpenAI uses separate bots for separate jobs, described in its crawler documentation:
- OAI-SearchBot finds pages for ChatGPT search. If you block it, your pages are not shown in ChatGPT’s search answers.
- GPTBot collects content that may be used to train OpenAI’s models. You can block it and still allow search.
- ChatGPT-User opens a page when a user asks ChatGPT to visit it.
What makes a page easy to cite
- The answer to a likely question comes early and in plain words.
- The page works without JavaScript. Our websites deliver every page as finished HTML.
- Facts are concrete: prices with currency, places, timelines and steps.
- The page says who wrote it and when it was last updated.
How to check
Ask ChatGPT the questions your customers would ask, with search turned on, and look at the sources it names. In your analytics, visits from ChatGPT usually appear with the source chatgpt.com.
Questions and answers
Can I buy a place among the sources ChatGPT cites?
No. What helps is a page that is open to OAI-SearchBot, easy to read and genuinely useful for the question.
Should I block GPTBot?
That is a business decision. Blocking GPTBot keeps your content out of OpenAI’s training, while OAI-SearchBot can still show you in search. The options are explained in AI crawlers and robots.txt.