Crawlers

ChatGPT-User: user agent, robots.txt, and verification

ChatGPT-User handles certain user-directed page visits. It is not OpenAI’s automatic search crawler, and a request is not evidence that the person then opened your website in their own browser.

User agent and purpose

Documented purpose: User-requested retrieval.

ChatGPT-User/1.0 (documented token)

OpenAI’s reference describes this user-requested case separately from GPTBot and OAI-SearchBot.

Robots.txt control

User-agent: ChatGPT-User
Disallow: /

This expresses a preference, but OpenAI warns that robots.txt may not apply because a user initiates the action. Use normal authentication and access controls for private content; a robots rule is not an access-control mechanism.

Review this example in the context of your existing groups and paths. Publish it at the origin’s /robots.txt and check the actual response. A policy change can take time to be read; it does not erase earlier copies of content.

Verify origin before trusting the name

Check the actual source against OpenAI’s ChatGPT-User address feed. This guide does not assert a reverse-DNS verification method for it.

A User-Agent is self-reported and can be spoofed. A matching header is a claimed identity, not an authenticated bot. Use the operator’s current IP or DNS procedure for origin confidence; those checks are not cryptographic request signatures and do not authorize access to private data.

What AnalyticFast detects today

AnalyticFast currently recognizes the self-reported ChatGPT-User token on valid analytics ingest requests. Opt-in crawler aggregates count those requests only; they do not automatically observe every page fetch on your site. AnalyticFast does not authenticate bot identities or perform the IP/rDNS checks described here.

A useful next check

Keep user retrieval and browser referrals as separate observations. If your question is whether an answer led to a sale, inspect a recorded referral journey and payment match instead of interpreting fetch counts as visitors.

Official sources and review date

• Official user-requested fetch behavior

Last checked 2026-10-31. Verify the latest policy and network data before changing production access rules.

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