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Glossary

What is ChatGPT-User?

ChatGPT-User is the agent that fetches a page in real time when a user's question requires it, as opposed to crawling in advance.

It is triggered by a person, not a schedule. When someone asks ChatGPT about a specific page or the assistant decides it needs current content, this agent retrieves it during the conversation. That makes blocking it different in kind from blocking a background crawler: you are declining to be readable at the moment someone is actively asking.

In our index it is disallowed on 2,074 of 33,670 readable domains. It counts as a citation-affecting block rather than a training one, and it is often caught unintentionally by a blanket rule aimed at OpenAI generally.

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