How to get your business cited by Claude
Claude can search the web when someone asks it for a local business, and Anthropic runs three crawlers that are set separately in robots.txt. Claude-SearchBot indexes pages for search and Claude-User fetches pages when someone asks Claude a question; Anthropic says blocking either can make your site less visible in Claude's answers. ClaudeBot collects content for training. To be cited, let the first two in, then give Claude a page that answers the question your customers ask.
Anthropic's three crawlers
Anthropic describes each one, and what blocking it does:
- Claude-SearchBot improves search result quality. Blocking it stops your content being indexed for search, which Anthropic says may reduce your visibility and accuracy in search results.
- Claude-User fetches pages when someone asks Claude a question. Blocking it stops Claude retrieving your content for that person, which may reduce your visibility in user-directed search.
- ClaudeBot collects content that may be used for training. Blocking it signals that your future content should be left out of training datasets.
Check robots.txt and your firewall
Anthropic says its crawlers follow robots.txt, and each subdomain needs its own rules. A firewall or CDN bot protection can block them even when robots.txt allows them, so check both. Our free crawler checker tests all three alongside the other AI crawlers.
What makes a business easy to cite
Claude has to be able to read and quote specific facts about you:
- Text on the page, not only in images or PDFs, and visible without JavaScript.
- A page per main service, answering the question customers ask, with areas covered and prices or from-prices.
- The same name, address, phone number and hours everywhere.
- Reviews and mentions on other sites that Claude's search can find.
How to check where you stand
Ask Claude, with web search on, the questions your customers ask, several times, and note who it names and which sources it cites. Our free AI recommendation check asks Claude, ChatGPT and Perplexity live.
Written by the Get Recommended team, run by Atlas Labs. We check these guides against each AI tool's own documentation and update them when it changes.
Questions
If I block ClaudeBot, will Claude stop recommending me?
Anthropic describes ClaudeBot as collecting training data, and Claude-SearchBot and Claude-User as the crawlers behind search and user requests. They're set separately, so check all three.
Does Claude use Google or Bing?
Anthropic doesn't say which search index Claude's web search uses. The practical answer is the same either way: be indexed widely, and let Claude's own crawlers in.
Can I pay Anthropic to be recommended?
No. There's no paid placement in Claude's answers.