OpenAI · Other AI bots
OAI-AdsBot
OpenAI’s ads and landing-page fetcher. Allow it if you run ChatGPT ads or need OpenAI to preview a destination URL.
- Operator
- OpenAI
- Traffic type
- Other AI bots
- Verification
- User-agent + IP range
- robots.txt
- Usually honors robots.txt
Usually means: Link-preview, ads, and product fetchers. Allow them if you want unfurls and landing-page fetches to work; they are not the citation path.
User-agent
robots.txt and most WAF rules match the token, not the full Mozilla string. Operators often wrap OAI-AdsBot in extra product or version text.
OAI-AdsBot
Example full string: Mozilla/5.0 AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko); compatible; OAI-AdsBot/1.0; +https://openai.com/adsbot
What OAI-AdsBot does
OAI-AdsBot fetches landing pages associated with OpenAI ad or commercial workflows. It is not OAI-SearchBot and will not get you cited in ChatGPT search.
How to get discovered
Allow OAI-AdsBot on the landing pages you advertise. Keep those URLs 200 with the same offer the ad promised.
Why OAI-AdsBot might skip you
Bot blocks on paid landing domains, or robots Disallow on /lp and /ads paths the adsbot is sent to check.
robots.txt rule
Allow this token on public pages you want retrieved or cited. A CDN “Block AI bots” toggle can still 403 it after robots.txt says Allow.
# Keep OAI-AdsBot eligible to fetch this site
User-agent: OAI-AdsBot
Allow: /Allowlist so OAI-AdsBot can reach you
A user-agent is spoofable. OpenAI publishes current CIDR ranges as JSON — fetch that file for WAF/CDN allowlists instead of copying ranges from a blog. Ranges rotate; a screenshot of ten prefixes will go stale. If Cloudflare “Block AI bots” is on, this is the list that gets the real crawler through.
https://openai.com/adsbot.json ↗
Sources
JavaScript: reads raw HTML only.
Other OpenAI bots
Training, search, and user-fetch tokens from the same operator are not interchangeable. Allow the discovery path even when you opt out of training.
OAI-AdsBot FAQ
What is OAI-AdsBot?
OAI-AdsBot fetches landing pages associated with OpenAI ad or commercial workflows. It is not OAI-SearchBot and will not get you cited in ChatGPT search.
Should I allow OAI-AdsBot in robots.txt?
Yes if you want OpenAI to be able to fetch and cite this site. Blocking OAI-AdsBot is how pages stay invisible to that product even when Googlebot still crawls them.
How do I know a request is really OAI-AdsBot?
A user-agent is a claim anyone can send. Match the OAI-AdsBot token, then check the source IP against OpenAI’s published ranges. Use those ranges as a WAF allowlist so a “Block AI bots” rule does not 403 the real crawler.
Letting OAI-AdsBot in is the start. Getting cited is the job.
Rankealo checks whether AI crawlers can reach you, then publishes pages built to be retrieved and quoted in ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, and Gemini.
