ChatGPT search
What is ChatGPT search?
ChatGPT search is the feature that lets ChatGPT look things up on the web while it answers, so responses can include current information and links to the sources used. ChatGPT decides on its own when a question needs a search, and users can also ask it to search. Cited sources appear as inline links and in a sources list.
OpenAI tested the idea as SearchGPT in mid-2024, launched ChatGPT search for paid users in October 2024, opened it to logged-in free users in December 2024 and made it available without an account in February 2025 in supported regions. It works in the ChatGPT apps and on chatgpt.com.
Which sites ChatGPT search can show is controlled by OpenAI’s OAI-SearchBot crawler. OpenAI says that if you block OAI-SearchBot in robots.txt, your pages won’t be shown in ChatGPT search answers, though they may still appear as plain navigational links. That is separate from GPTBot, which collects content for model training, and from ChatGPT-User, which fetches a page when a user’s request needs it. See AI crawlers.
Why ChatGPT search matters for SEO
ChatGPT is one of the most used AI assistants, and many of its users treat it as a search engine. When it searches, it cites a handful of sources; being one of them puts your page in front of a user at the moment of the question.
Clicks from ChatGPT often carry a referral that analytics can see (for example, chatgpt.com as the source, or a utm_source=chatgpt.com parameter on the link), which lets you measure this traffic in GA4.
How to show up in ChatGPT search
- Allow OAI-SearchBot in robots.txt and make sure your firewall or CDN isn’t blocking it.
- Make sure your important pages rank in traditional search. Assistants that search the web rely on search results to find candidates to read.
- Answer the question clearly near the top of each page, with specific facts that are easy to quote.
- Earn mentions on third-party pages that ChatGPT already cites for your topic.
- Ask ChatGPT your customers’ questions with search on, repeatedly, and note which sources it cites.
ChatGPT search example
# Allow ChatGPT search, opt out of model training
User-agent: OAI-SearchBot
Allow: /
User-agent: GPTBot
Disallow: /ChatGPT search FAQ
Does blocking GPTBot remove me from ChatGPT search?
No. GPTBot is OpenAI’s training crawler. ChatGPT search inclusion is controlled by OAI-SearchBot, so you can block training and still allow search.
How do I track traffic from ChatGPT?
In GA4, look for sessions with chatgpt.com as the source or referrer. Many links from ChatGPT also carry utm_source=chatgpt.com.
Related SEO terms
AI crawlers (GPTBot, ClaudeBot)
AI crawlers are bots that AI companies use to collect web content for model training or for AI search answers, such as GPTBot and ClaudeBot.
AI citations are the links an AI assistant shows as sources for its answer. Being cited means your page helped build the answer.
Perplexity is an AI answer engine that searches the web for each question and writes an answer with numbered citations to its sources.
AI visibility is how often and how prominently AI assistants such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude and Perplexity mention your brand or cite your site.
Robots.txt is a plain-text file at the root of a site that tells crawlers which URLs they may and may not request.
A large language model (LLM) is an AI model trained on huge amounts of text to predict and generate language, such as GPT, Gemini or Claude.