# ChatGPT-Agent > ChatGPT-Agent is OpenAI's crawler for answering questions. ChatGPT's agent mode browsing on a person's behalf. Someone gave ChatGPT a task that involved visiting your site, rather than asking a question about it. **Category:** AI crawlers **Also known as:** OpenAI ChatGPT-Agent **Updated:** 2026-09-09 **Source:** https://truestat.io/glossary/openai-chatgpt-agent --- ## What ChatGPT-Agent is OpenAI runs four separate crawlers and gives each one its own token, which is more considerate than it first appears: it means you can refuse the training crawl and keep the one that puts you in ChatGPT's answers, using two lines in a robots file. Most operators on this site do not offer that choice. On this site ChatGPT-Agent is counted as an AI answer, which is the row it appears in on your dashboard. The category matters because it decides which number moves when this crawler visits, and the four are reported separately for exactly that reason. ## What its traffic looks like Usually a single request for one URL, arriving while somebody waits — no sweep of the site, no repeated visits, and often no robots.txt fetch first. If you see one hit on one page and nothing else, that is the normal shape. A burst of ten to fifty pages in a few minutes is also normal and means an agent was researching rather than answering a single question. ## How it is verified Checked as ip ranges + reverse dns. The user agent has to carry the token, and then the address is compared against what OpenAI publishes — refetched every six hours, so a newly announced range is picked up without a deploy. A request that matches neither is recorded as unverified rather than as a forgery: a published list can be incomplete, and an accusation needs evidence. Only a reverse DNS record resolving to somebody else produces a spoofed verdict, which is proof rather than the absence of it. ## If you block it OpenAI's assistant can no longer open your page to answer a question about it. People will still be told about you from whatever the model already knows, but without the current page, a link, or a citation — which is usually the opposite of what a site owner wants. This is the crawler that brings people back. When an assistant fetches a page to answer with, it usually shows the source and links to it, so the visit can turn into a reader. Blocking it removes you from the answer without removing the question. The argument for blocking is the same one that applies to any zero-click surface: if a model can answer from your page, some readers get what they came for without visiting. That matters most if your pages are the product — reference material, calculators, documentation — and least if they exist to sell something the model cannot deliver. ## How it differs from OpenAI's other crawlers OpenAI sends 5 crawlers and gives each its own token, so they can be allowed and refused separately. The tokens differ by a few characters and what the fetch means does not: ChatGPT-User — ai assistant. Fetches a page while ChatGPT is answering someone's question. OAI-SearchBot — search indexing. Builds the index behind ChatGPT search. GPTBot — ai training. Collects public pages that may improve future OpenAI models. OAI-AdsBot — other bots. Checks pages submitted as ChatGPT ads. Confusing two of these is the most common mistake with this operator, and it is expensive in one direction: a rule meant for the training crawler that lands on the search crawler removes you from results without stopping any training. ## Questions ### Is ChatGPT-Agent in my logs really OpenAI? Not necessarily, and that is why it is worth checking. Any script can send ChatGPT-Agent as its user agent. OpenAI publishes the addresses its crawler uses, so the claim can be tested against them — a request from outside those ranges is recorded as unverified rather than accepted. ### How do I tell ChatGPT-Agent apart from OpenAI's other crawlers? By the token, and only by the token. OpenAI also sends ChatGPT-User, OAI-SearchBot, GPTBot, and the strings differ by a few characters while the jobs differ completely — one may be answering somebody's question while another collects training material. Match on the exact token rather than on the operator's name appearing anywhere in the header, or the four end up counted as one. ### Does ChatGPT-Agent run JavaScript? No. It requests the HTML and leaves. That is why a browser-based analytics tag never records these visits: the tag is JavaScript, and nothing runs it. Seeing this crawler at all requires reading it server-side. ### Why is ChatGPT-Agent counted as AI answers and not something else? Because that is the job this particular crawler does. OpenAI runs more than one — ChatGPT-User, OAI-SearchBot, GPTBot — and they are counted separately because the decisions about them are separate. Filing them together under one operator name would let ordinary indexing look like AI interest, which is the single most misleading thing an AI traffic report can do. ### Why does ChatGPT-Agent not show up in Google Analytics? Google Analytics runs in the browser. This crawler never opens a browser — it requests the HTML, reads it, and leaves, so the tracking script is never executed and no event is ever sent. Every browser-based analytics tool has the same blind spot, which is why crawler traffic has to be read from the server side to be seen at all. ### What happens if a ChatGPT-Agent visit cannot be verified? It is recorded as unverified, not as a forgery. A published address list can be incomplete or behind — an operator can start using a range before it appears in the file — so a miss is not evidence of anyone pretending. A visit is only marked as spoofed when the address's own reverse DNS record resolves to somebody else, which is proof rather than absence of proof. ## Related - https://truestat.io/glossary/openai-chatgpt-user - https://truestat.io/glossary/openai-oai-searchbot - https://truestat.io/glossary/openai-gptbot - https://truestat.io/glossary/openai-oai-adsbot - https://truestat.io/glossary/fcrdns - https://truestat.io/glossary/spoofed-crawler --- From the TrueStat glossary — https://truestat.io/glossary. Privacy-first web analytics that also shows you which AI assistants are reading your site.