# ChatGPT Search: How It Finds and Cites Web Pages > How ChatGPT search finds and cites web pages, which OpenAI bots to allow or block, how to opt out, and how ChatGPT visits show in analytics. ChatGPT is the AI assistant from OpenAI, and ChatGPT search is its web search feature. Search answers questions with current information and links to the sources. To appear in these answers, your site must let OpenAI's search crawler, OAI-SearchBot, read your pages. ## What ChatGPT search is OpenAI [launched ChatGPT search](https://openai.com/index/introducing-chatgpt-search/) on October 31, 2024. The [OpenAI help article on web search](https://help.openai.com/en/articles/9237897-chatgpt-search) describes how it works today: - ChatGPT can search the web on its own when a question needs current information. A user can also start a search from the tools menu. - Answers can include citations. A user selects a citation to open the source. - A Sources button, when it shows, lists the cited sources and other related links. - Web search is available on the Free, Go, Plus, Pro, Business, Enterprise and Edu plans. People who are not signed in can also use it. ## Where ChatGPT search gets results The help article says that ChatGPT search sometimes works with other search providers. In that case, ChatGPT writes one or more short search queries from the question and sends them to those providers. The article links to the privacy policies of Microsoft and Shopify as search providers. OpenAI says that it does not share the IP address or the account information of the user with these providers. OpenAI also runs its own crawler for search. Its [crawler documentation](https://developers.openai.com/api/docs/bots) names OAI-SearchBot for this job. So a page can reach an answer through a search provider or through OpenAI's own crawl. ## Pages that ChatGPT opens for a user During a chat, ChatGPT can open a page when a user action needs it. These visits come from a separate agent, which the [ChatGPT-User guide](/ai-crawler-bot/chatgpt-user/) covers. In ChatGPT Work on paid plans, a [cloud browser](https://help.openai.com/en/articles/20001280-using-cloud-browser-in-chatgpt) can also read pages, click buttons and fill in forms for a user. It signs each request with Web Bot Auth, which uses HTTP Message Signatures ([RFC 9421](https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc9421.html)), and sends a `Signature-Agent` header set to `"https://chatgpt.com"`. The OpenAI [allowlisting page](https://help.openai.com/en/articles/11845367-chatgpt-agent-allowlisting) gives the settings for Cloudflare, Akamai, HUMAN and Vercel. ## Which bots to allow or block OpenAI uses three robots.txt tokens, and each one controls a different part of ChatGPT: - `OAI-SearchBot` decides whether ChatGPT search answers can show your pages. See the [OAI-SearchBot guide](/ai-crawler-bot/oai-searchbot/). - `GPTBot` collects content that OpenAI can use to train its models. It has no effect on search. See the [GPTBot guide](/ai-crawler-bot/gptbot/). - `ChatGPT-User` opens pages for user actions in ChatGPT and Custom GPTs. See the [ChatGPT-User guide](/ai-crawler-bot/chatgpt-user/). OpenAI says that each setting is independent of the others. A common choice is to stay in ChatGPT search and opt out of training: ``` User-agent: OAI-SearchBot Allow: / User-agent: GPTBot Disallow: / ``` ## Get into ChatGPT search OpenAI gives two steps for sites that want to appear: allow OAI-SearchBot in robots.txt, and let its IP ranges through your firewall or CDN. The OAI-SearchBot guide has the robots.txt groups, the IP list and the time that a change takes. We found no OpenAI documentation of a form to submit a site, or of the ranking factors of ChatGPT search. OpenAI does not say how it picks the pages that an answer cites. ## Keep pages out of ChatGPT search The documented opt-out for the product is a robots.txt block for OAI-SearchBot. A block for GPTBot or ChatGPT-User does not remove your pages from search. OpenAI says that sites that opt out can still appear as navigational links. ## Visits from ChatGPT in your analytics A click on a citation opens your page in the browser of the user. How the visit shows in your analytics depends on the referrer and on the tags in the link. The [UTM and AI traffic guide](/utm-parameters-usage-guide/) explains how Google Analytics 4 groups visits from ChatGPT and other AI assistants. --- [View the canonical page](https://aichatwatch.com/ai-search-engine/chatgpt-search/) ยท [Browse llms.txt](https://aichatwatch.com/llms.txt)