OAI-SearchBot, GPTBot and ChatGPT-User: which OpenAI agent does what
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Short answer
OpenAI runs four documented crawlers. GPTBot collects training data. OAI-SearchBot builds the index behind ChatGPT search. ChatGPT-User fetches a page when a user asks. OAI-AdsBot checks pages submitted as ads. Only OAI-SearchBot and ChatGPT-User affect whether ChatGPT can find and cite your store.
The four agents
All four tokens and strings are quoted from OpenAI's crawler documentation, read 23 August 2026.
| Token | Job | Blocking it means |
|---|---|---|
| GPTBot | Training data collection | Your text is not used to train future models |
| OAI-SearchBot | Search indexing | Your site stops being surfaced in ChatGPT search |
| ChatGPT-User | Live fetch on a user's request | ChatGPT cannot open your page when asked to |
| OAI-AdsBot | Safety check on submitted ads | Pages you submit as ads cannot be validated |
The one that matters for a store
OAI-SearchBot. It is the agent that decides whether your pages exist as far as ChatGPT's search features are concerned, and its user agent is "Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/131.0.0.0 Safari/537.36; compatible; OAI-SearchBot/1.4; +https://openai.com/searchbot".
If you allow nothing else on this page, allow this one. A store that has blocked OAI-SearchBot has opted out of ChatGPT search while almost always believing it opted out of training.
ChatGPT-User is not a crawler
It is worth separating because the mental model is different. ChatGPT-User does not sweep your site building an index. It fetches a specific URL because a person in a conversation asked ChatGPT to look at it, one page at a time.
Blocking it produces a particular failure: a shopper explicitly asks ChatGPT about your product page, and ChatGPT tells them it cannot access it. That is a worse outcome than not being found, because the shopper already wanted you.
A reasonable default for a Shopify store
Allow OAI-SearchBot and ChatGPT-User. Decide about GPTBot on your own terms, since it is a values call with little revenue attached either way. OAI-AdsBot only matters if you are running ChatGPT ads, and it is harmless to leave open.
The one configuration to avoid is the blanket block, because it is almost never what the person applying it meant. The full decision is written out here.
How you actually change this on Shopify
Shopify generates robots.txt for you and there is no field in the admin for it. To change a rule you add a `robots.txt.liquid` template to your theme, which Shopify then renders instead of the default while still keeping its own future updates.
Shopify's help page is blunt about the risk: editing this file is an unsupported customization, Shopify Support will not help with it, and it says in as many words that incorrect use of the feature can result in loss of all traffic. Copy the default rules first, add your block, and read the rendered file at /robots.txt afterwards.
- Online Store, then Themes, then Edit code
- Add a new template called robots.txt.liquid
- Keep the default rules, then add your own user-agent group
- Load yourstore.com/robots.txt and read what actually rendered
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between OAI-SearchBot and GPTBot?
OAI-SearchBot indexes sites so they can be surfaced in ChatGPT's search features. GPTBot collects content that may be used to train foundation models. They are separate tokens with separate robots.txt rules, and blocking one has no effect on the other.
Should I block ChatGPT-User?
For a store, almost certainly not. ChatGPT-User only fetches a page because a user asked it to. Blocking it means a shopper who explicitly asks about your product gets told the page cannot be accessed.
Does allowing OAI-SearchBot mean my products appear in ChatGPT shopping?
It makes your web pages eligible to be surfaced and cited. Product listings in ChatGPT shopping come through Shopify's Catalog syndication, which is a separate path and does not depend on your robots.txt.
Sources
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