OAI-SearchBot

What OAI-SearchBot does

A search crawler reads your pages ahead of time and adds them to its operator's index. That index is what its search and assistant draw on to find pages and point people to them.

How to recognize it

OAI-SearchBot names itself in its user agent with the token OAI-SearchBot. That's what Ethogram matches, as a whole word in any case.

A user agent is only a claim, though: anyone can send OAI-SearchBot. Scrapers borrow well-known names to get past rules meant for the real agent, so before you trust a visit, or block one, check where it came from.

How to tell it's really OAI-SearchBot

OpenAI publishes the IP ranges OAI-SearchBot uses, as JSON: openai.com/searchbot.json. A request from inside those ranges is the real OAI-SearchBot. One from outside them is an impostor.

Ethogram runs these checks on every request and gives each visit a verdict: verified, unverified or spoofed. Spoofed visits are counted apart and never added to OAI-SearchBot's numbers. How verdicts work.

Allow or block OAI-SearchBot in robots.txt

robots.txt groups its rules by user-agent token. To ask OAI-SearchBot to stay off your whole site, add this group:

To let it read everything, name it with an allow rule. A group that names OAI-SearchBot replaces the User-agent: * group for it, so it follows only these rules:

robots.txt is a request, not a lock: it's up to OAI-SearchBot to read it and follow it. Ethogram reads your robots.txt every day and shows whether OAI-SearchBot respects it, with the disallowed paths it asked for. To actually keep it out, use your firewall or bot protection, and check the visit's verdict first so you block impostors, not the real OAI-SearchBot.

See what OAI-SearchBot does on your site

Most analytics filter OAI-SearchBot out as a bot. Ethogram records it on your server, where every request lands, with no script to load, and shows:

• Every visit from OAI-SearchBot, with a verdict on whether it's really OAI-SearchBot.
• Each visit step by step: the pages it read, what it searched for, and where it was blocked, looped or hit an error.
• Whether it respects your robots.txt, with the disallowed paths it asked for.
• How much of your bandwidth it takes, next to its share of requests.
• Impostors that use its name, caught and counted apart from the real OAI-SearchBot.
• New versions of its user agent as they appear, and what changed in its behavior with each.
• A heads-up when its visits spike or stop, or when it starts getting blocked.