Checks / AI crawler access
robots.txt keeps ChatGPT-User out of your home page and most of the site
ChatGPT-User may read only the paths robots.txt allows for it. Your home page and the rest of the site stay closed to it, so it cannot cite them.
robots_partial_chatgpt_user · AI crawler access · Error
What triggers it
robots.txt does not let ChatGPT-User fetch your home page, but leaves some other paths open for it; the finding names the first three.
What to change
Remove the Disallow: / rule for ChatGPT-User in robots.txt, or add Allow rules for the other paths you want read.
Example
Lines that allow ChatGPT-User in robots.txt:
User-agent: ChatGPT-User
Allow: /How to confirm the fix
- Open https://example.com/robots.txt: the group that names ChatGPT-User (or the * group, if none does) leaves most of the site open, the home page included
- Run a new crawl: the AI crawler table no longer reports ChatGPT-User as mostly blocked
About ChatGPT-User
ChatGPT-User visits a web page when a person asks ChatGPT or a custom GPT a question that needs it. OpenAI says it is not used to crawl automatically and that, because a user starts the request, robots.txt rules may not apply. OpenAI lists 234 IP ranges for it.
OAI-SearchBot is the search crawler and does obey robots.txt.
Its address list is the longest of the three OpenAI files we counted: openai.com/chatgpt-user.json held 234 prefixes on 21 October 2026, creation time 2026-10-20, the day before this page. A list that long is a reason to fetch it again when you check a log line, not to copy it once into a firewall.
Job: User-triggered fetch. Follows robots.txt: Not always. OpenAI says robots.txt rules may not apply to ChatGPT-User, because its actions are initiated by a user..
ChatGPT-User: operator, user-agent string and address list
How common it is
We have not measured how common this is on a sample of sites. Counts appear here when a study covers it.
About this check
| Check ID | robots_partial_chatgpt_user |
|---|---|
| Report section | AI crawler access |
| Severity | Error |
| How it is decided | Measured: read directly from the page or the server's response. |
| Added | Before 19 Oct 2026 (versions 1 and 2), or a site-wide check with no version date yet |
| Status | Measured in every report |
| Report gives the code | Yes, one block for the site |
Settings by platform
For robots.txt, where the setting lives differs by platform. Our guides cover 13 of them: AI crawler settings by platform.
Related checks
- robots.txt blocks Claude-User
- robots.txt blocks OAI-SearchBot
- robots.txt keeps Claude-SearchBot out of your home page and most of the site
- robots.txt keeps Claude-User out of your home page and most of the site
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