▓Benchmark GEO & AI Search

13.5% of websites block GPTBot (347,988 sites, August 2026)

Across 347,988 websites audited by SearchScore in August 2026, 13.5% block GPTBot in their robots.txt and 7.83% block OAI-SearchBot. Of the sites blocking GPTBot, 42.6% allow OpenAI search.

ID
SS-BM-001
Confidence
High · 92
Evidence
Strong
Updated
2026-10-19
13.5% Across 347,988 websites audited by SearchScore in August 2026, 13.5% block GPTBot in their robots.txt and 7.83% block OAI-SearchBot. Of the sites blocking GPTBot, 42.6% allow OpenAI search.
Sample
347,988 websites
Period
August 2026
Source
SearchScore research: AI crawler policy 2026

See the underlying data →

What this means

Blocking GPTBot keeps a site out of OpenAI's future training snapshots; blocking OAI-SearchBot (7.83%) also removes it from ChatGPT's search answers, and no Google-only rank tracker will ever surface either. Some blocks are deliberate: 42.6% of the sites blocking GPTBot allow OpenAI search. Others can come from legacy wildcard rules or bot filters that predate AI search, so check what yours actually blocks. It is one of the cheapest problems to fix and the most damaging to leave in place.

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Recommended next steps

    Apply the method Crawlability Framework Framework → See the wider capability Crawl Optimisation Capability →