The Best Fluffy Pancakes recipe you will fall in love with. Full of tips and tricks to help you make the best pancakes.
CHEAPUNO guide
Why blocking GPTBot reduces ChatGPT citations
OAI-SearchBot drives ChatGPT visibility, so blocking GPTBot alone can hurt your citation metrics.
Cover
Photo: Leeroy (CC0)
What you are probably seeing
You notice your site is blocked to GPTBot in your robots.txt file but you see no correlation between this and your citation loss in Google Search Console or analytics.
Your audit shows you block GPTBot while leaving OAI-SearchBot open, yet your citation counts from ChatGPT remain low or disappear after your block is active.
Why it happens
ChatGPT uses two separate bots for different purposes: GPTBot is for training data, while OAI-SearchBot is for live retrieval and citations.
Many operators block GPTBot to prevent training on their content but forget that OAI-SearchBot is the crawler responsible for fetching current information to answer user queries with citations.
What changed recently
2026-10-06 · 111 of the top 1,000 sites block GPTBot. 35 never mention the bot behind ChatGPT search.
HowDevtoSeo is now mapping crawler gaps for that issue:
• 35 top sites block GPTBot but never mention OAI-SearchBot
• 51 of 111 full GPT blockers still allow OAI-SearchBot
Source: how_devto_seo
2026-10-06 · Google’s Mueller Says AI Crawlers Access Sitemaps & RSS In His Logs
Official statements now separate the two for you:
• Training crawlers lack sitemap options.
• Use default names for visibility.
• RSS feeds are easier for crawlers.
Source: Search Engine Journal
2026-10-06 · I Stopped Asking AI for SEO Ideas and Started Feeding It Search Console Data Instead
Ste is now using Search Console data for that gap:
• Sitemap holds over 140 URLs with no errors or warnings reported by Search Console.
• Pages ranking positions 5-10 with zero clicks may need title or snippet changes.
Source: HackerNoon
Step by step
1. Review your robots.txt file to confirm which user-agents are currently blocked or allowed.
2. Check the documentation for OAI-SearchBot to understand its specific role in retrieval-augmented generation.
3. Decide your strategy: allow OAI-SearchBot if you want citations, or block both if you want to exclude your site from ChatGPT entirely.
4. Update your robots.txt file to reflect your decision for both GPTBot and OAI-SearchBot.
5. Monitor your citation metrics in ChatGPT and search logs over the next few days to see if visibility changes.
Ways to go further
Other problems readers raise
Do I need snapshot services if Next.js static generation works?
How to Audit SEO for Google and AI Overviews
How to check if ChatGPT describes your business accurately?
Sources