These OpenAI user agents have different purposes, so a website should decide how to handle each according to its own policy. OAI-SearchBot supports search results in ChatGPT. GPTBot crawls content that may be used to improve OpenAI's foundation models. ChatGPT-User may visit a page in response to a user's action and is not a general automatic search crawler. The official OpenAI crawler page is the source for their current descriptions.
Make independent policy decisions
OpenAI documents separate robots.txt controls for OAI-SearchBot and GPTBot. A publisher can allow search discovery while disallowing model-training crawling. A rule for one agent does not automatically state a preference for the other. Start with the organisation's actual publication and data policies, then review the current user-agent names and network information in the official documentation.
Understand the search consequence
OpenAI says that sites opting out of OAI-SearchBot will not be shown in ChatGPT search answers, although navigational links may still appear. Allowing the crawler makes search discovery possible; it is not a guarantee of inclusion or citation. Also check the page's public availability, server response and any infrastructure that may block an allowed request.
Treat user-triggered visits differently
ChatGPT-User is associated with certain user actions. OpenAI notes that robots.txt rules may not apply in the same way to these visits because a person initiated the request. It is not the control for search opt-outs. Avoid interpreting a ChatGPT-User request in logs as evidence that an automatic search index has crawled or cited the page.
Review the result without touching sensitive paths
Use public robots testing and server observations to confirm that the intended rule is delivered for the public site. Record the decision and date so it can be reviewed when product behaviour or policy changes. This content explains the distinction; any change to access controls belongs to a separate, authorised operational procedure.
Practical next step
Write a three-row policy table naming the desired treatment of search discovery, training crawling and user-triggered retrieval. Compare it with the public robots response and the latest OpenAI documentation. Do not infer one preference from another.