Claude-SearchBot user agent
Operated by Anthropic
Claude-SearchBot is Anthropic's crawler that indexes pages to improve the quality of search results inside Claude.
The Claude-SearchBot bot at a glance
- Claude-SearchBot is operated by Anthropic and indexes web pages so an AI search product can show and cite them in answers.
- The robots.txt token for Claude-SearchBot is Claude-SearchBot.
- Blocking an AI search crawler has no effect on Google or Bing rankings.
- Claude-SearchBot robots.txt support: Yes.
- Recommendation for Generative Engine Optimization (GEO): Allow.
What is Claude-SearchBot?
Claude-SearchBot navigates the web so Claude can find relevant, accurate pages when it searches for a user.
Anthropic says blocking Claude-SearchBot keeps a site’s content out of that index, which may reduce its visibility in answers from Claude’s web search.
Should you block Claude-SearchBot?
Allow Claude-SearchBot unless it causes a measurable load problem.
| Effect on search rankings | Blocking an AI search crawler has no effect on Google or Bing rankings. |
|---|---|
| Effect on AI visibility | Blocking removes your pages from that AI search index, so its answers can no longer cite or link to your website. |
| Follows robots.txt | Yes |
| Recommendation | Allow |
How to block or allow Claude-SearchBot
Put the robots.txt rule in the file at the root of every domain and subdomain, for example https://example.com/robots.txt. The token Claude-SearchBot is matched case-insensitively.
robots.txt: block
# Block Claude-SearchBot
User-agent: Claude-SearchBot
Disallow: /robots.txt: allow
# Allow Claude-SearchBot
User-agent: Claude-SearchBot
Allow: /robots.txt: partial
# Keep Claude-SearchBot out of private areas only
User-agent: Claude-SearchBot
Disallow: /wp-admin/
Disallow: /cart/
Disallow: /checkout/
Disallow: /my-account/
Allow: /Nginx
# Nginx: return 403 to Claude-SearchBot
if ($http_user_agent ~* "(Claude\-SearchBot)") {
return 403;
}Apache
# Apache .htaccess: return 403 to Claude-SearchBot
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} (Claude\-SearchBot) [NC]
RewriteRule .* - [F,L]Cloudflare WAF
# Cloudflare > Security > WAF > Custom rule, action: Block
(http.user_agent contains "Claude-SearchBot")How to verify real Claude-SearchBot traffic
Anthropic publishes the IP ranges that Claude-SearchBot uses. A request with the Claude-SearchBot user agent from an IP outside that list is an impersonator.
How to find Claude-SearchBot in your server logs
Search the web server access log for the token. The command below counts Claude-SearchBot requests per URL on Nginx or Apache.
grep -i "Claude-SearchBot" access.log | awk '{print $7}' | sort | uniq -c | sort -rn | head -20For a full report per AI bot, upload the log to the AI Log File Analyzer, a free tool by Justin Hà.
Claude-SearchBot FAQ
Claude-SearchBot uses the robots.txt token "Claude-SearchBot". Anthropic does not publish a full user-agent string, so match the token inside the User-Agent header.
Yes. Anthropic states that Claude-SearchBot follows robots.txt rules written for the "Claude-SearchBot" token.
Blocking an AI search crawler has no effect on Google or Bing rankings. Blocking removes your pages from that AI search index, so its answers can no longer cite or link to your website.
Add two lines to the robots.txt file at the root of each domain and subdomain: "User-agent: Claude-SearchBot" followed by "Disallow: /". The token is case-insensitive. Changes can take up to 24 hours to be picked up.
Yes. Anthropic publishes the IP ranges Claude-SearchBot uses. Check the request IP against that list; a matching user agent from any other IP is an impersonator.
Search your server access log for "Claude-SearchBot", for example with: grep -i "Claude-SearchBot" access.log. The AI Log File Analyzer by Justin Hà counts visits per AI bot from an uploaded log file.
Sources: Anthropic crawler documentation. Last reviewed by Justin Hà.
See which of these bots actually reach your website
The AI Log File Analyzer by Justin Hà counts visits from GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot and other AI crawlers in your server log, for free. The GEO Technical Package sets up robots.txt, llms.txt and crawler access for AI search.
