Free tool · OpenAI
Can ChatGPT actually cite you?
Four things have to be true before ChatGPT can name your site in an answer. This checks all four against OpenAI’s own agents, and tells you which one is in the way.
01The catch
What most sites get wrong about ChatGPT.
GPTBot is the one almost everyone blocked, and GPTBot is the one that matters least for citation. OAI-SearchBot and ChatGPT-User fetch pages while an answer is being written; blocking those is what removes a site from ChatGPT's answers.
Allowing the agents makes citation possible rather than likely. ChatGPT also answers from model memory without retrieving anything, and in that mode the deciding factor is whether the model already associates the brand with the category.
02Questions
- Which crawler does ChatGPT use?
- ChatGPT fetches pages at answer time using OAI-SearchBot and ChatGPT-User. OpenAI separately runs GPTBot to collect training data, which is a different decision with different consequences.
- Why am I not showing up in ChatGPT?
- Four things have to be true before citation is even possible: the answer-time agents can fetch the page, the content is in the HTML without JavaScript, the page carries structured data, and the business exists as an identifiable entity. This check reports all four. If they all pass and you are still absent, the constraint has moved to authority, which is about who else references you rather than anything on your own site.
- Does blocking GPTBot remove me from ChatGPT?
- Not by itself. GPTBot collects training data, while OAI-SearchBot and ChatGPT-User fetch pages at answer time. Blocking the training crawler and allowing the answer-time agents leaves live citation intact, and getting that pair the wrong way round is the most common way a site removes itself from answers by accident.
- Is this check free, and does it need an account?
- Free, with no account and no email. The check is HTTP and parsing rather than model calls, so it costs bandwidth rather than tokens, and a free tool that asks for an address before telling you anything is a lead form wearing a tool's clothes.
- Does passing this guarantee ChatGPT will cite me?
- Allowing the agents makes citation possible rather than likely. ChatGPT also answers from model memory without retrieving anything, and in that mode the deciding factor is whether the model already associates the brand with the category.
03The other engines
Each engine uses different agents, so a site can be readable by one and invisible to another. The checks are separate for that reason.
Next
One engine is a sample, not a picture.
The full check scores all four preconditions across every engine at once, across twenty-three checks, with each finding traced back to a line in your HTML.