Googlebot vs GPTBot: Which AI Crawler Should You Allow or Block?
Complete side-by-side comparison of Googlebot (Google) and GPTBot (OpenAI): user-agent strings, safety ratings, SEO impact, and copy-paste blocking rules. Updated August 2026.
Quick Verdict
Both Googlebot and GPTBot carry the same safety rating (Safe). Your decision should come down to whether you want your content used by Google versus OpenAI, and whether each bot's purpose (training, search, or user requests) aligns with your content strategy.
| Attribute | Googlebot | GPTBot |
|---|---|---|
| Operator | OpenAI | |
| User-agent string | Googlebot |
GPTBot |
| Category | Search Engines | AI & LLM Bots |
| Safety rating | Safe | Safe |
| SEO impact if blocked | Critical - Blocking removes you from search results | Low - No SEO ranking impact |
| Recommendation | Never block - it will remove your site from major search results. | Generally safe to allow; provides legitimate crawling value. |
| Official docs | Googlebot docs | GPTBot docs |
What is Googlebot?
Googlebot is Google's primary web crawling bot. It discovers and indexes new and updated pages to be added to the Google Search index. Blocking this bot will remove your site from Google Search results.
Full Googlebot guideWhat is GPTBot?
OpenAI's web crawler. Used to collect training data for GPT models. Blocking it prevents your content from being used to train ChatGPT but does not affect search visibility.
Full GPTBot guideHow to block each bot
Block Googlebot in robots.txt
User-agent: Googlebot Disallow: /
Block GPTBot in robots.txt
User-agent: GPTBot Disallow: /
Want to block or allow many bots at once? Use our free robots.txt generator with 196+ bot presets, then verify with the AI crawler checker.
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