What is ChatGPT search?
ChatGPT search is the part of ChatGPT that answers questions using results from the web. OpenAI says sites appear in ChatGPT search answers through its crawler OAI-SearchBot, not through GPTBot, and that opted-out sites may still show as navigational links. Tracking it shows whether your brand is named when buyers ask.
How a site gets into it
OpenAI's documentation ties search visibility to one crawler, OAI-SearchBot. Allowing it in robots.txt is the documented route to being shown; blocking it keeps a site out of search answers, apart from possible navigational links. Training is handled by a separate crawler, so a training opt-out does not remove you from search.
How citations appear
OpenAI's developer documentation for web search says results carry a citation annotation that contains the URL, title and location of the cited source. For a brand this matters in two ways: a citation links to a page, and a mention names the brand whether or not any link appears. Both can happen independently.
How to improve and measure
- Make sure OAI-SearchBot is allowed and your pages deliver their text as plain HTML.
- Publish pages that answer buyer questions early and plainly, and honest comparison pages.
- Keep your facts identical across your site and third-party profiles.
- Ask a fixed set of buyer questions on a schedule and record who is named, as described in the guide on tracking AI visibility.
Answers differ between assistants and between runs, so measure ChatGPT separately and repeat each question.
Read more: How ChatGPT chooses which brands to recommend