How is this different from Google Analytics?

Google Analytics shows you traffic. Shadow shows you traffic, AI bot activity, what AI platforms say about your brand, AND tells you what to do about all of it. It's analytics + AI intelligence + action steps in one tool.

Do I need to install anything?

For basic monitoring (bot detection, AI perception, readiness score) — nope, just enter your URL. For full visitor analytics (clicks, behavior, sessions), add one script tag. One-click integrations for Vercel, Shopify, WordPress, and more.

Will it slow down my site?

No. The script is under 5KB and loads async. Zero impact on page speed or Core Web Vitals. External monitoring has literally no impact — it watches from the outside.

What AI bots does Shadow detect?

All of them. GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot, Google-Extended, Bytespider, Amazonbot, and dozens more. The Shadow Network means new bots get identified across all users instantly.

What do you mean by "actionable steps"?

Shadow doesn't just show you graphs. It says things like: "ChatGPT has your pricing wrong — add structured data to /pricing to fix it" or "Your bounce rate on /features is 68% — here's why and what to change." Specific, do-it-today recommendations.

Can Shadow block bots?

Shadow is a telescope, not a shield. It shows you who's visiting and what AI says about you. It generates block rules and robots.txt configs you can apply — but it doesn't intercept traffic.

Yes. Shadow never collects PII. IP addresses are hashed after classification. No cookies on your visitors. All Shadow Network data is anonymized. GDPR compliant by design.

What is OAI-SearchBot?

OAI-SearchBot is OpenAI's web crawler for ChatGPT Search (formerly SearchGPT). It crawls and indexes web pages so that ChatGPT can surface them as search results when users ask questions. It is completely separate from GPTBot, which collects training data, and ChatGPT-User, which fetches specific URLs in real-time at a user's request.

Does blocking OAI-SearchBot stop ChatGPT from training on my content?

No. OAI-SearchBot and GPTBot serve entirely different purposes. GPTBot collects training data for OpenAI's language models. OAI-SearchBot indexes content for ChatGPT's search feature. Blocking OAI-SearchBot removes your site from ChatGPT Search results — it has no effect on training data collection. To stop training, you need to block GPTBot separately.

If I block OAI-SearchBot, will my site disappear from ChatGPT Search entirely?

Largely yes, for proactive indexing. ChatGPT Search relies on OAI-SearchBot's index as its primary source. Blocking it prevents your content from being added to or refreshed in that index. However, ChatGPT may still surface your site via third-party search data it licenses (e.g., Bing). To comprehensively opt out of ChatGPT Search, block OAI-SearchBot and optionally opt out of Bing's index.

What is the difference between OAI-SearchBot, GPTBot, and ChatGPT-User?

OpenAI operates three distinct bots: (1) GPTBot — crawls the web to collect training data for OpenAI's AI models. Blocking it prevents your content from being used in future model training. (2) OAI-SearchBot — crawls the web to build and maintain the search index for ChatGPT Search. Blocking it removes your site from ChatGPT Search results. (3) ChatGPT-User — not a crawler; it's the user agent used when a ChatGPT user asks the chatbot to browse a specific URL in real-time. You can control each independently in robots.txt.

Should I block OAI-SearchBot?

It depends on your goals. Block OAI-SearchBot if: you have a paywalled or subscription site and don't want free summaries in ChatGPT, you've seen your traffic cannibalized by AI Overviews/ChatGPT answers, or your content is a competitive moat you don't want indexed. Allow OAI-SearchBot if: you want discovery from the growing base of ChatGPT Search users, your content benefits from broader distribution, or you're a publisher / news site seeking AI search traffic.

Does OpenAI respect robots.txt for OAI-SearchBot?

Yes. OpenAI has publicly documented that OAI-SearchBot respects robots.txt Disallow directives. Independent testing has confirmed compliance. A robots.txt block is sufficient for most publishers to opt out of ChatGPT Search indexing.

Can I block GPTBot but allow OAI-SearchBot (or vice versa)?

Yes, and this is actually a common configuration. Many publishers want to prevent training data collection (block GPTBot) while still benefiting from ChatGPT Search traffic (allow OAI-SearchBot). Since they are separate user agents, you can configure each independently in robots.txt with individual User-agent blocks.

OpenAIRespects robots.txtSearch Index

How to Block OAI-SearchBot: Control Your Presence in ChatGPT Search

OAI-SearchBot is OpenAI's crawler for ChatGPT Search. It's completely separate from GPTBot. Blocking it removes your site from ChatGPT's search results — not training data. Here's what that means and when it makes sense.

Updated March 2026

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