Claude-SearchBot
Navigates the web to improve the quality of Claude's search results, so answers can point to relevant, current pages.
Where this comes from
- Documented by the vendor. Source: support.claude.com
- Honours robots.txt. Published addresses: claude.com/crawling/bots.json.
- Counted in the readiness score. It can keep a site out of AI search or answers, so a block costs points.
In the top 1,000 websites
- 11.1% block it in robots.txt (63 of the 569 sites with a robots.txt), as of 2026-10-12.
- Method, limits and the full data: the October 2026 study of the top 1,000 websites.
What blocking it costs
Your pages leave the search index Claude-SearchBot builds, so Anthropic's product can no longer find or cite them from its own index. The score counts it among the crawlers that feed AI search and answers, so a block costs points.
The robots.txt lines
To let it in (a group that names the crawler replaces any wildcard rules for it, so this also lifts a User-agent: * block):
User-agent: Claude-SearchBot
Allow: /To keep it out:
User-agent: Claude-SearchBot
Disallow: /A rule in robots.txt is a request. Anthropic says this crawler honours it. The robots.txt generator writes a whole file with the same split: block the training crawlers, keep the search and answer crawlers.
Also from Anthropic
ClaudeBot· Training onlyClaude-User· Fetches when a user asksClaude-Web· Retired tokenanthropic-ai· Retired token
Does Claude-SearchBot get through on your site?
Run the free check: it reads your robots.txt against all 51 crawlers and tells you which ones can read you, and what to change.