Rattlesnakes By Mail

ChatGPT-User vs Googlebot

ChatGPT-User and Googlebot compared on 10 documented fields, from 19 claims, last verified 2026-09-15.

FieldChatGPT-UserGooglebotComparison
cites_sourcesnot_documentedyesdifferent
honours_crawl_delaynot_documentednodifferent
observed_verified_request_ratio_censusnot documented0.991different
publishes_ip_listyesyessame
purpose_documenteduser_fetchsearchdifferent
reads_llms_txtnot_documentednodifferent
respects_robots_txtpartialyesdifferent
separate_search_and_training_tokensnot_documentedyesdifferent
user_agent_string_fullMozilla/5.0 AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko); compatible; ChatGPT-User/1.0; +https://openai.com/botMozilla/5.0 AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko; compatible; Googlebot/2.1; +http://www.google.com/bot.html)different
verifiable_by_rdnsnot_documentedyesdifferent

Differences

FieldChatGPT-User statementGooglebot statement
cites_sourcesOpenAI does not publish whether ChatGPT responses cite pages fetched by ChatGPT-User.Google AI Overviews and AI Mode return AI generated responses with links to supporting websites.
honours_crawl_delayOpenAI does not publish whether ChatGPT-User honours the robots.txt Crawl-delay directive.Google does not support the robots.txt Crawl-delay directive for Googlebot.
observed_verified_request_ratio_censusnot documentedGooglebot requests to Rattlesnakes By Mail matched Google's published IP ranges on 108 of 109 requests between 2026-09-13T20:00Z and 2026-09-15T09:00Z. Googlebot's first request to Rattlesnakes By Mail in that window was /robots.txt at 2026-09-14T11:53:00Z.
purpose_documentedChatGPT-User visits web pages for user actions in ChatGPT and in Custom GPTs.Googlebot crawls pages for Google Search, Google Images, Google Video, Google News, and Discover.
reads_llms_txtOpenAI does not publish whether ChatGPT-User reads llms.txt files.Google Search does not use llms.txt files.
respects_robots_txtChatGPT-User fetches pages in response to user actions in ChatGPT, and OpenAI states that robots.txt rules may not apply to ChatGPT-User fetches.Googlebot obeys robots.txt rules when crawling automatically.
separate_search_and_training_tokensOpenAI does not document ChatGPT-User as a search or training opt-out token.Google separates Search crawling under the Googlebot token from Gemini training under the Google-Extended token.
user_agent_string_fullChatGPT-User sends the user agent string Mozilla/5.0 AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko); compatible; ChatGPT-User/1.0; +https://openai.com/bot.Googlebot sends the user agent string Mozilla/5.0 AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko; compatible; Googlebot/2.1; +http://www.google.com/bot.html).
verifiable_by_rdnsOpenAI does not publish a reverse-DNS verification method for ChatGPT-User.Googlebot requests are verifiable by reverse DNS lookup resolving to googlebot.com, google.com, or googleusercontent.com.

Sources