OAI-SearchBot
OpenAI •
Since 2024
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What is OAI-SearchBot?
OAI-SearchBot is OpenAI's dedicated crawler designed to power search functionalities across OpenAI's products and services. This bot enables OpenAI to provide more accurate and up-to-date search results by indexing web content specifically for search purposes. Unlike GPTBot which focuses on training data collection, OAI-SearchBot is optimized for real-time search indexing and retrieval. The bot respects standard web crawling protocols and robots.txt directives, allowing website owners to control access to their content. By maintaining its own search index, OpenAI can offer enhanced search capabilities that complement its AI models' knowledge base.
User Agent String
Mozilla/5.0 AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko; compatible; OAI-SearchBot/1.0; +https://openai.com/searchbot)
How to Control OAI-SearchBot
Block Completely
To prevent OAI-SearchBot from accessing your entire website, add this to your robots.txt file:
# Block OAI-SearchBot
User-agent: OAI-SearchBot
Disallow: /
Block Specific Directories
To restrict access to certain parts of your site while allowing others:
User-agent: OAI-SearchBot
Disallow: /admin/
Disallow: /private/
Disallow: /wp-admin/
Allow: /public/
Set Crawl Delay
To slow down the crawl rate (note: not all bots respect this directive):
User-agent: OAI-SearchBot
Crawl-delay: 10
How to Verify OAI-SearchBot
Verification Method:
Verify requests come from OpenAI IP ranges with proper user agent
Verify requests come from OpenAI IP ranges with proper user agent
Learn more in the official documentation.
⚠️ AI Training Notice
This bot may collect and use your website content for AI model training. Consider whether you want your content used for this purpose before allowing access.
This bot may collect and use your website content for AI model training. Consider whether you want your content used for this purpose before allowing access.
Detection Patterns
Multiple ways to detect OAI-SearchBot in your application:
Basic Pattern
/OAI\-SearchBot/iStrict Pattern
/^Mozilla/5\.0 AppleWebKit/537\.36 \(KHTML, like Gecko; compatible; OAI\-SearchBot/1\.0; \+https\://openai\.com/searchbot\)$/Flexible Pattern
/OAI\-SearchBot[\s\/]?[\d\.]*?/iVendor Match
/.*OpenAI.*OAI\-SearchBot/iImplementation Examples
// PHP Detection for OAI-SearchBot
function detect_oai_searchbot() {
$user_agent = $_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'] ?? '';
$pattern = '/OAI\\-SearchBot/i';
if (preg_match($pattern, $user_agent)) {
// Log the detection
error_log('OAI-SearchBot detected from IP: ' . $_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR']);
// Set cache headers
header('Cache-Control: public, max-age=3600');
header('X-Robots-Tag: noarchive');
// Optional: Serve cached version
if (file_exists('cache/' . md5($_SERVER['REQUEST_URI']) . '.html')) {
readfile('cache/' . md5($_SERVER['REQUEST_URI']) . '.html');
exit;
}
return true;
}
return false;
}
# Python/Flask Detection for OAI-SearchBot
import re
from flask import request, make_responsedef detect_oai_searchbot():
user_agent = request.headers.get('User-Agent', '')
pattern = r'OAI-SearchBot'
if re.search(pattern, user_agent, re.IGNORECASE):
# Create response with caching
response = make_response()
response.headers['Cache-Control'] = 'public, max-age=3600'
response.headers['X-Robots-Tag'] = 'noarchive'
return True
return False# Django Middleware
class OAISearchBotMiddleware:
def __init__(self, get_response):
self.get_response = get_response
def __call__(self, request):
if self.detect_bot(request):
# Handle bot traffic
pass
return self.get_response(request)
// JavaScript/Node.js Detection for OAI-SearchBot
const express = require('express');
const app = express();// Middleware to detect OAI-SearchBot
function detectOAISearchBot(req, res, next) {
const userAgent = req.headers['user-agent'] || '';
const pattern = /OAI-SearchBot/i;
if (pattern.test(userAgent)) {
// Log bot detection
console.log('OAI-SearchBot detected from IP:', req.ip);
// Set cache headers
res.set({
'Cache-Control': 'public, max-age=3600',
'X-Robots-Tag': 'noarchive'
});
// Mark request as bot
req.isBot = true;
req.botName = 'OAI-SearchBot';
}
next();
}app.use(detectOAISearchBot);
# Apache .htaccess rules for OAI-SearchBot# Block completely
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} OAI\-SearchBot [NC]
RewriteRule .* - [F,L]# Or redirect to a static version
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} OAI\-SearchBot [NC]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/static/
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /static/$1 [L]# Or set environment variable for PHP
SetEnvIfNoCase User-Agent "OAI\-SearchBot" is_bot=1# Add cache headers for this bot
<If "%{HTTP_USER_AGENT} =~ /OAI\-SearchBot/i">
Header set Cache-Control "public, max-age=3600"
Header set X-Robots-Tag "noarchive"
</If>
# Nginx configuration for OAI-SearchBot# Map user agent to variable
map $http_user_agent $is_oai_searchbot {
default 0;
~*OAI\-SearchBot 1;
}server {
# Block the bot completely
if ($is_oai_searchbot) {
return 403;
}
# Or serve cached content
location / {
if ($is_oai_searchbot) {
root /var/www/cached;
try_files $uri $uri.html $uri/index.html @backend;
}
try_files $uri @backend;
}
# Add headers for bot requests
location @backend {
if ($is_oai_searchbot) {
add_header Cache-Control "public, max-age=3600";
add_header X-Robots-Tag "noarchive";
}
proxy_pass http://backend;
}
}
Should You Block This Bot?
Recommendations based on your website type:
| Site Type | Recommendation | Reasoning |
|---|---|---|
| E-commerce | Allow | Essential for product visibility in search results |
| Blog/News | Consider Blocking | Your content may be used for AI training without compensation |
| SaaS Application | Block | No benefit for application interfaces; preserve resources |
| Documentation | Allow | Improves documentation discoverability for developers |
| Corporate Site | Allow | Allow for public pages, block sensitive areas like intranets |
Advanced robots.txt Configurations
E-commerce Site Configuration
User-agent: OAI-SearchBot
Crawl-delay: 5
Disallow: /cart/
Disallow: /checkout/
Disallow: /my-account/
Disallow: /api/
Disallow: /*?sort=
Disallow: /*?filter=
Disallow: /*&page=
Allow: /products/
Allow: /categories/
Sitemap: https://example.com/sitemap.xml
Publishing/Blog Configuration
User-agent: OAI-SearchBot
# Blocking AI training bot
Disallow: /
SaaS/Application Configuration
User-agent: OAI-SearchBot
Disallow: /app/
Disallow: /api/
Disallow: /dashboard/
Disallow: /settings/
Allow: /
Allow: /pricing/
Allow: /features/
Allow: /docs/
Quick Reference
User Agent Match
OAI-SearchBotRobots.txt Name
OAI-SearchBotCategory
ai, searchRespects robots.txt
Yes
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