AI Crawler Access

Optimus Pass Glossary · Last updated August 29, 2026

Definition

AI crawler access describes whether a website's robots.txt allows the automated bots that AI companies use to fetch content — for example GPTBot, OAI-SearchBot, and ChatGPT-User from OpenAI, or Google-Extended from Google. Blocking a crawler removes your content from that company's training or search-grounding pipeline, depending on the bot.

Why it matters

If AI crawlers cannot fetch your pages, your content cannot be retrieved or cited by the engines those crawlers feed — a silent exclusion that no amount of copywriting fixes.

Practical example

A site blocks all bot traffic with a wildcard robots.txt rule and disappears from ChatGPT web-search answers. Allowing OAI-SearchBot and GPTBot restores access; OpenAI notes robots.txt changes can take about a day to take effect.

Frequently asked questions

Does blocking Google-Extended hurt my Google rankings?+

No. Google documents that Google-Extended controls access for Gemini training only and does not affect how pages rank in Google Search.

Which bots should I allow for AI visibility?+

For OpenAI web search, OAI-SearchBot grounds ChatGPT answers; GPTBot feeds training data. Other AI companies publish their own crawler tokens. Allow the ones whose answers you want to appear in.

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