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Use a layered policy: identify each crawler by purpose, verify that its requests are genuine, express crawl preferences in a host-specific robots.txt, protect private material with authentication, and validate the result in server, CDN and analytics data. Search discovery, AI training controls and user-triggered retrieval are different decisions; one blanket “AI bot” rule can produce the wrong outcome.

Start with the crawler’s purpose, not its name

A user-agent label tells you what a request claims to be. It does not by itself prove who sent the request or what the operator will do with the response. Build your policy around the function you want to permit or restrict.

Crawler or token Documented role What a publisher can decide
OAI-SearchBot OpenAI’s crawler for discovering websites that can be surfaced in ChatGPT search features. Allow it when eligibility for ChatGPT search summaries or snippets is wanted; disallow it when that discovery is not wanted.
GPTBot OpenAI’s crawler for content that may be used to train OpenAI’s generative AI foundation models. Allow or disallow it independently of OAI-SearchBot.
ChatGPT-User A user-triggered agent used for actions in ChatGPT and Custom GPTs, rather than an automatic discovery crawler. Report it separately. OpenAI says robots.txt rules may not apply to these user-initiated requests, and this agent does not determine inclusion in ChatGPT Search.
Googlebot Google’s standard search crawler. Control automated crawling with robots.txt, while handling index removal separately.
Google-Extended A standalone robots.txt product token for managing whether content crawled from a site may be used for training future Gemini models and grounding in certain Gemini experiences. Allow or disallow the specified Gemini uses without changing Google Search inclusion or ranking.

OpenAI describes the OAI-SearchBot and GPTBot settings as independent: allowing search discovery does not require allowing the training-related crawler. Google likewise says Google-Extended is not a separate HTTP user-agent and does not affect a site’s inclusion in Google Search or act as a Search ranking signal. Recheck the operators’ documentation before changing policy because names, products and IP ranges can change.

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Inventory requests from logs before changing rules

Begin with server or CDN access logs, not assumptions about which bots “should” be visiting. Export a time window long enough to reveal periodic crawls and include both successful and denied requests. A practical audit record contains:

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Timestamp and timezone Correlates a request with deployments, rate limits and WAF events.
Hostname, protocol and port Shows which robots.txt scope applies; a rule on one host does not automatically cover another.
Path and query string Reveals whether the crawler is requesting articles, feeds, APIs, account pages or expensive URLs.
HTTP status and response bytes Distinguishes served content from denials, throttling and errors, and shows the cost of each request.
User-agent string and source IP Provides a candidate identity that must be verified rather than trusted.
Referrer, when present Helps separate search referrals from direct or user-triggered activity.
CDN/WAF action Records whether a request was allowed, challenged, blocked or rate-limited before reaching the origin.

Aggregate by claimed bot, hostname, path and outcome. A total request count can hide the important question: is a crawler repeatedly receiving 403 responses, fetching a prohibited directory, or successfully reading the pages you intended to expose?

Verify the identity behind the user-agent

Google warns that crawler user-agent strings are commonly spoofed. For Googlebot, its guidance recommends reverse-DNS verification followed by a forward-DNS check, or matching the source address against Google’s published crawler IP ranges. Apply the same principle to other operators: use the current verification method or address ranges documented by that operator, and do not allowlist a request solely because its string contains a familiar bot name.

When verification fails, keep the request in an “unverified” category and apply the same controls you use for unknown automation. Preserve the original IP and headers so a security engineer can investigate without losing evidence.

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Decide what outcome you actually want

Three outcomes are often confused:

  • Discovery: a provider may fetch a public page so its search product can find and present it. This can lead to a citation or referral, but does not guarantee inclusion, ranking or traffic.
  • Specified use restriction: a provider-specific token can signal that content should not be used for a documented training or grounding purpose.
  • Privacy or access control: the page must not be available to an unauthenticated requester. This requires authentication or equivalent authorization, not a robots preference.
Control What it does Limit to plan for
Allow a search crawler Permits the provider’s documented discovery crawler to fetch eligible pages. Does not promise a result, a snippet, a citation or any referral volume.
Disallow a training-related crawler Signals that the provider’s stated training use is not permitted. Tokens are provider-specific; one disallow rule does not cover every AI product.
Path rules in robots.txt Express which automated agents may fetch URL paths. It is not confidentiality protection and may not remove an already known URL from search results.
noindex or access protection A crawlable noindex directive can prevent Google indexing; authentication limits who can retrieve the response. The crawler must be able to fetch a noindex instruction. Blocking the page in robots.txt can prevent it from seeing that instruction.
WAF/CDN enforcement Blocks, challenges or throttles requests at the delivery layer. It can also block wanted crawlers, so inspect false positives and response codes.

Write a robots.txt policy that matches the decision

Place the file at the root of each relevant origin, such as https://example.com/robots.txt. Google’s specification limits a robots.txt file to the host, protocol and port that serve it. Audit every production hostname, subdomain, alternate scheme and staging environment that can serve content.

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Allow ChatGPT search discovery while disallowing OpenAI training crawling

User-agent: OAI-SearchBot
Allow: /

User-agent: GPTBot
Disallow: /

This expresses two independent choices. It does not control ChatGPT-User requests, and it does not guarantee that pages will be shown in ChatGPT search.

Restrict only a sensitive path for a crawler

User-agent: GPTBot
Disallow: /licensed/
Disallow: /internal-api/
Allow: /licensed/public-summary/

Use the most specific rules you need. Google says it selects the most specific matching user-agent group and applies the rules within that file’s scope. Test overlapping Allow and Disallow paths with the operator’s current parser guidance; do not assume a wildcard group will be merged with a named group.

Control Google-Extended separately

User-agent: Google-Extended
Disallow: /

This token is a product control, not a second Googlebot user-agent. Google states that disallowing it does not remove pages from Google Search or change Search ranking. Keep ordinary Googlebot rules separate so a training-use decision does not accidentally become a search-crawl decision.

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Check the deployed file, not just source control

  1. Request /robots.txt over every public scheme and hostname.
  2. Confirm the response is a successful plain-text response, without an authentication challenge or an HTML error page.
  3. Inspect redirects and CDN caching so an old policy is not being served.
  4. Test representative URLs against each named user-agent group, including an allowed page, a disallowed page and an overlapping path.
  5. Record the deployment time and schedule a recheck after caches have had time to expire.

Keep indexing and privacy controls separate

Google’s guidance distinguishes crawling from indexing. A URL blocked by robots.txt can still appear in search results, sometimes without a snippet, because the crawler may learn the URL elsewhere. If a page should stay out of Google’s index, Google recommends a crawlable noindex directive or access protection.

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For an HTML page, a crawlable response can contain:

<meta name="robots" content="noindex">

For non-HTML files, send an equivalent X-Robots-Tag: noindex response header. Do not simultaneously disallow the URL in robots.txt if the crawler needs to fetch it to read the directive. For confidential material—drafts, subscriber records, private APIs or paid downloads—use password protection, signed authorization or another server-side access control. A robots rule is a request to cooperative crawlers, not a security boundary.

Validate the entire delivery path

A crawler can be permitted in robots.txt and still fail to retrieve a page. Compare access-log entries with CDN and WAF events, origin responses and rate-limit counters.

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  • 403 Forbidden: usually indicates a firewall, CDN rule, authentication layer or origin policy denied the request. Check the matching rule and whether the identity was verified.
  • 429 Too Many Requests: indicates throttling or rate limiting. Review burst limits, retry behavior and whether several crawler addresses share one quota.
  • 5xx responses or timeouts: point to origin capacity, upstream failures or an overloaded path rather than a robots decision.
  • Unexpected 200 responses: confirm that the body is the intended page, not a login form, challenge page or generic error returned with a success status.

OpenAI’s crawler-access troubleshooting guidance recommends checking response codes, infrastructure logs, WAF/CDN configuration and traffic analytics. Make a controlled test from a verified source where possible, then compare the result with a normal browser request. Avoid broad allowlists that bypass bot protection for every address in a published range without monitoring.

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Measure search referrals without mistaking them for crawl volume

OpenAI says publishers that allow OAI-SearchBot can identify ChatGPT referrals in analytics with utm_source=chatgpt.com. Create a report for that parameter and segment by landing page, status and conversion event.

Referral sessions are only visits that reached your analytics system. They are not a count of crawler requests, pages fetched, blocked attempts or every time content was used in an answer. Keep three metrics separate:

  • verified crawler requests recorded in server or CDN logs;
  • requests allowed, challenged, throttled or denied;
  • human referral sessions attributed to ChatGPT analytics parameters.

Troubleshoot common policy failures

“I allowed search, but my pages do not appear”

Check that OAI-SearchBot is allowed on the exact hostname serving the page, that the response is reachable without a challenge, and that the page is not blocked by a broader path rule. Allowing a crawler makes a page eligible for consideration; it does not guarantee inclusion, ranking, citation or referrals. OpenAI says an updated robots.txt can take about 24 hours to affect its search systems, so record the change time before judging the result.

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“A page is still visible after I disallowed a crawler”

Robots rules govern fetching, not universal removal of a known URL. A link or title can sometimes surface when obtained from another source. If Google indexing is the issue, provide a crawlable noindex directive or require authentication, and ensure your robots policy does not prevent the relevant crawler from seeing that instruction.

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“The log shows an AI-bot name, but the request looks hostile”

Treat the name as an unverified claim. Check reverse DNS or the operator’s published ranges, inspect the WAF event and compare behavior across paths. Keep unverified automation under your normal bot controls until identity is established.

“The robots file looks right, but the crawler receives errors”

Follow the request through DNS, CDN, WAF, authentication, origin routing and application code. A 403 or 429 identifies a delivery-layer decision that robots.txt cannot override. Correct the narrowest rule possible, then retest and monitor for false positives.

Run a recurring governance check

  1. Maintain an inventory of provider tokens, their documented purposes and the business owner for each decision.
  2. Review robots.txt on every host, protocol and port, including staging and asset hosts.
  3. Revalidate provider identity methods and IP ranges before changing allowlists.
  4. Sample logs for paths, status codes, response sizes and WAF actions rather than relying only on totals.
  5. Check that noindex directives remain crawlable and that private content remains access-controlled.
  6. Compare verified crawler activity with ChatGPT referral analytics; do not combine the measures.
  7. Revisit the policy after a site migration, CDN change, authentication change or provider documentation update.

The durable approach is separation: let each provider’s documented search crawler, training token and user-triggered agent receive the policy intended for that purpose, then verify the result at the network and application layers.

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