The short answer

Check the response status, robots rules, index controls, canonical URL, meaningful HTML content and any firewall or login challenge. Allowing a crawler is one access condition, not proof that the page was indexed or cited. OpenAI documents OAI-SearchBot for search separately from GPTBot for training.

Check the delivered response

Open the actual public URL and inspect both status and content. A page may return a successful status while serving a consent wall, challenge or empty shell. Check the delivery layer and server logs where authorized, rather than inferring crawler access from the browser alone.

Apply the policy to the intended crawler

Search discovery, user-initiated fetching and training collection can have different documented crawler identities. Review the provider’s current documentation before changing a firewall or robots rule. Do not weaken private-area protection to make public marketing pages discoverable.

After a targeted change, recheck the page and preserve the evidence. Accessibility establishes that a request can reach the source under tested conditions; it does not prove indexing or source selection.

What to check

  1. Request the public URL without a login and check that it returns the intended content successfully.
  2. Inspect robots.txt, page-level robots directives, the canonical URL and firewall challenges for the crawler you intend to allow.
  3. Check that the answer is present in accessible HTML. A successful request proves access at that moment, not indexing or citation.

A practical example

OAI-SearchBot and GPTBot have different documented purposes. Review your search-access policy separately from your training-access policy instead of treating every AI crawler as interchangeable.

Sources and further reading

These steps are Arrow AI's implementation guidance. The example is illustrative; it is not a measured customer result. Publication and source access do not guarantee an AI recommendation.

Apply this to your website

Identify the source gaps and decide what to improve with Arrow's free audit. Review what Arrow GEO measures before choosing a reporting scope.