Why isn’t my site showing up in ChatGPT?
ChatGPT, Claude and Perplexity can only cite pages their search crawlers can reach and read. Most sites that never show up are blocked somewhere along the way. Here’s what to check, based on the AI companies’ own documentation.
The check opens on AI readiness: which AI crawlers your site lets in, and how much of the page they can read.
What AI search needs
- Crawlers
OAI-SearchBot,Claude-SearchBotandPerplexityBotallowed in robots.txt- Firewall
- The same crawlers let through your CDN and bot protection
- Content
- In the HTML your server sends, not added later by JavaScript
- Index
- In Bing too. ChatGPT search draws on Bing among other providers
Common causes and fixes
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robots.txt blocks the AI search crawlers
ChatGPT finds pages with
OAI-SearchBot, Claude withClaude-SearchBotand Perplexity withPerplexityBot. OpenAI says sites that block OAI-SearchBot aren’t shown in ChatGPT search answers. A blanketDisallow: /for all bots blocks them too.Fix: Allow the three search crawlers in robots.txt. You can still block training crawlers like GPTBot and ClaudeBot. The AI crawler checker shows what your robots.txt allows.
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Your CDN or firewall blocks them
robots.txt is only one layer. Since July 2025, new Cloudflare sites block known AI crawlers by default, and other bot protection does the same. A blocked crawler never reaches your robots.txt.
Fix: Check your CDN’s AI crawler settings, such as Cloudflare’s AI Crawl Control, and allow the search crawlers. Your server logs show whether they get through.
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The content only appears after JavaScript runs
Most AI crawlers read the HTML your server sends and don’t run JavaScript. If your text is loaded by a JavaScript app, the crawler sees an empty page.
Fix: Render the main content on the server, or prerender the pages. The AI readiness check shows how much of your page is readable without JavaScript.
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Bing doesn’t know your pages
ChatGPT search partners with third-party search providers, Microsoft Bing among them. Sites that are missing or thin in Bing’s index have fewer chances to be cited.
Fix: Add your site to Bing Webmaster Tools, submit your sitemap, and use IndexNow so new pages reach Bing within days.
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Your pages are hard to quote
AI answers quote short, specific passages. Pages without a clear answer near the top, headings that match questions, or a visible date and author are harder to cite.
Fix: Lead each page with a direct answer, use headings people would search for, and show who wrote it and when.
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The change is too recent
OpenAI says robots.txt changes take about 24 hours to reach its systems, and new or changed pages still need to be crawled after that.
Fix: Give it a few days, then check your server logs for visits from the search crawlers.
Fixed it. Now what?
Check that the search crawlers actually visit. Your server logs show when OAI-SearchBot, Claude-SearchBot and PerplexityBot read your pages, and whether they were let through.
Next guide
Are AI crawlers visiting your site? →Questions
What people ask when the fixes above don’t explain it.
Does blocking GPTBot keep me out of ChatGPT?
No. GPTBot collects training data. ChatGPT’s search answers come from OAI-SearchBot, so you can block GPTBot and still be cited. Claude works the same way with ClaudeBot and Claude-SearchBot.
Can I submit my site to ChatGPT?
There’s no submission form, and OpenAI says there’s no way to guarantee placement. Allowing OAI-SearchBot, being in Bing and writing quotable pages are what you control.
Does llms.txt help?
Not reliably yet. llms.txt is an emerging proposal, and the major assistants don’t document using it to choose sources. It doesn’t hurt to have one, but fix the causes above first.
How do I know whether AI cites my site?
Visits from ChatGPT show in your analytics with chatgpt.com as the source. Bing Webmaster Tools has an AI Performance report that counts citations in Copilot and lists the questions behind them.