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OpenAI

OAI-SearchBot

IndexingPublished CIDRsVerified July 2026

What it is

OAI-SearchBot discovers and indexes pages so ChatGPT search can retrieve and cite current web results. Aiola classifies it as indexing because it supports a searchable retrieval index.

In Aiola's taxonomy, Indexing means crawled for ai or search indexing.

User agent

Look for the match token inside the complete HTTP User-Agent header. Tokens can be spoofed, so use the network checks below for authentication.

Full example User-Agent
Mozilla/5.0 AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko); compatible; OAI-SearchBot/1.0; +https://openai.com/searchbot
Case-insensitive match token
OAI-SearchBot

Official IP ranges

OpenAI publishes an official JSON feed. This cached snapshot contains 35 CIDR prefixes, last fetched 2026-07-11. Open the live source ↗

OAI-SearchBot CIDRs — snapshot fetched 2026-07-11
104.210.140.128/28
135.234.64.0/24
172.182.193.224/28
172.182.193.80/28
172.182.194.144/28
172.182.194.32/28
172.182.195.48/28
172.182.209.208/28
172.182.211.192/28
172.182.213.192/28
172.182.224.0/28
172.203.190.128/28
20.14.99.96/28
20.168.18.32/28
20.169.6.224/28
20.169.7.48/28
20.169.77.0/25
20.171.123.64/28
20.171.53.224/28
20.25.151.224/28
20.42.10.176/28
4.227.36.0/25
40.67.175.0/25
40.90.214.16/28
51.8.102.0/24
74.7.175.128/25
74.7.228.0/25
74.7.228.128/25
74.7.229.0/25
74.7.229.128/25
74.7.230.0/25
74.7.241.128/25
74.7.242.128/25
74.7.243.0/25
74.7.244.0/25

Verify authenticity

Start with the source IP recorded by your trusted edge or server, not an untrusted forwarded header.

Test one CIDR in Python (replace REQUEST_IP)
python3 -c 'import ipaddress; print(ipaddress.ip_address("REQUEST_IP") in ipaddress.ip_network("104.210.140.128/28"))'
Reverse- and forward-DNS double lookup
host REQUEST_IP
# Confirm the hostname ends in an official suffix
host RETURNED_HOSTNAME
# The forward lookup must return REQUEST_IP

For production checks, test against every current prefix in the vendor feed. Re-fetch feeds regularly: a July 2026 snapshot is evidence of publication, not a permanent firewall list.

Control it with robots.txt

OpenAI documents crawler controls for this bot family. Robots.txt can direct cooperative crawling, but it cannot prove that a request is authentic.

Allow OAI-SearchBot
User-agent: OAI-SearchBot
Allow: /
Block OAI-SearchBot
User-agent: OAI-SearchBot
Disallow: /

Read OpenAI's official crawler documentation ↗

Track it

Aiola tracks this crawler on your site — crawls, pages, trends. See when OAI-SearchBot arrives, which URLs it requests, and how activity changes over time.

Explore Aiola Analytics

FAQ

What is OAI-SearchBot?

OAI-SearchBot discovers and indexes pages so ChatGPT search can retrieve and cite current web results. Aiola classifies it as indexing because it supports a searchable retrieval index.

What user-agent token identifies OAI-SearchBot?

Match the case-insensitive token “OAI-SearchBot” in the User-Agent header. A matching header alone does not authenticate the sender.

Can I verify OAI-SearchBot by IP address?

OpenAI publishes a JSON feed, and this page snapshots 35 CIDR prefixes fetched on 2026-07-11. Match the source IP against the current vendor feed before trusting it.

Can robots.txt block OAI-SearchBot?

OpenAI documents crawler controls for this bot family. Robots.txt can direct cooperative crawling, but it cannot prove that a request is authentic. Use the specific “OAI-SearchBot” group when you want a rule for this identity without changing rules for every crawler.

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