Yes. OpenAI provides separate controls for GPTBot and OAI-SearchBot. Blocking GPTBot indicates that content gathered by that crawler should not be used to train foundation models. OAI-SearchBot serves ChatGPT search. 1
An example robots.txt rule
User-agent: GPTBot
Disallow: /
User-agent: OAI-SearchBot
Allow: /
Merge the relevant rules into your existing file. Do not replace the entire file with this example and accidentally remove sitemap declarations or other necessary crawler restrictions.
Check your firewall and CDN too. Permission in a text file cannot overcome a block elsewhere. A claimed user-agent name is not proof of identity either; OpenAI publishes IP ranges to support verification. 1
What this does not guarantee
Allowing a crawler does not guarantee a citation, ranking or visit. Robots rules are also not access controls: private content needs authentication and authorization. 2
OpenAI separately identifies some user-initiated visits with ChatGPT-User. Automated crawling rules may not apply to those requests in the same way. 1
After changing the file, inspect its public response and relevant server logs. Treat successful crawling as an access check, not evidence that search visibility has already improved. You are setting a content-access preference—not purchasing placement in an AI answer.
