What is ChatGPT-User?
ChatGPT-User is OpenAI's web crawler that visits websites when ChatGPT users request information. This enables ChatGPT to include links in its responses. Agent Analytics can track when it visits your website.
Overview
| Operated By | OpenAI |
| Source | Official Website |
| Expected To Follow Robots.txt | Yes |
| Insights Last Updated | August 11, 2026 |
Do you operate this agent? Contact us to suggest an update.
Category
Expected Behavior
ChatGPT-User makes isolated, on-demand requests rather than crawling your site. Traffic follows user demand, ranging from sporadic fetches to steady visits for a popular assistant.
ChatGPT-User's User Agent
| User Agent | Mozilla/5.0 AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko); compatible; ChatGPT-User/1.0; +https://openai.com/bot |
How To Block ChatGPT-User With Robots.txt
Add this rule to your robots.txt file to block ChatGPT-User from accessing your entire website, or use Automatic Robots.txt to block all AI assistants at once. You can customize which pages are blocked by swapping out / for a different path.
User-agent: ChatGPT-User # https://knownagents.com/agents/chatgpt-user
Disallow: /Global Statistics for ChatGPT-User
As of August 11, 2026, this data reflects agent visits measured across thousands of websites using Agent Analytics, combined with daily scans of the top 1000 websites and their robots.txt files.
Robots.txt Blocked Percentage
Country of Origin
Robots.txt Blocking Trend
16% of top websites block ChatGPT-User in their robots.txt files.
Overall AI Assistant Traffic
0.7% of all web traffic came from AI assistants.
Top Visited Website Categories
The types of websites most frequently visited by ChatGPT-User.
Frequently Asked Questions
Should I Block ChatGPT-User?
Usually not. Blocking ChatGPT-User can keep your pages out of AI-generated answers and eliminate potential citation traffic. It does not improve traditional search rankings. For context, 16% of the top websites we track currently have robots.txt rules for ChatGPT-User.
Does ChatGPT-User Follow Robots.txt Rules?
Yes. ChatGPT-User is expected to follow robots.txt directives, so a disallow rule is the appropriate first step. Automatic Robots.txt can add and maintain that rule, while Agent Analytics lets you verify whether ChatGPT-User respects it.
Does ChatGPT-User Access Private Content?
Not ordinarily. ChatGPT-User fetches pages as an anonymous visitor without a stored login. Content protected by a paywall or login remains out of reach.
Why Is ChatGPT-User Visiting My Website?
A user asked OpenAI's assistant a question your page could help answer. ChatGPT-User retrieved the page to support its response, often with a citation linking back to your site.
How Can I Tell if ChatGPT-User Is Visiting My Website?
Agent Analytics tracks visits from ChatGPT-User and every other known AI agent, crawler, and scraper, then authenticates each visit using ChatGPT-User's published verification method. You can also check your server logs for requests whose user-agent string contains "ChatGPT-User". Look for a single-page request with no follow-up navigation. A matching log entry alone is not proof because any bot can claim to be ChatGPT-User.