What it does
Claude-SearchBot is Anthropic's ai search crawler. An AI search index that can cite and link your pages in answers (ChatGPT search, Perplexity, Claude search, Alexa, Siri). Blocking removes you from those answer surfaces — for most sites these are wanted crawlers.
Search-index crawler. NOT substring-matched by 'ClaudeBot' — the missed hyphenated token cost us a 3,737-appid enumeration on a production site we operate (2026-07-06..09). Match it explicitly.
Full UA: not captured in our July 2026 roster review — match log hits on the token Claude-SearchBot (case-insensitive substring) and verify by IP before acting.
How to verify a hit is really Claude-SearchBot
Verification method (July 2026): Published IP list: https://claude.com/crawling/bots.json (fetched live 2026-08-22)
Strongest available check: the vendor publishes the crawler's egress IPs. Fetch the list, then confirm the hit's source IP falls inside it — a UA match from any other IP is a spoofer.
User-agent strings are freely spoofed, so a UA match alone proves nothing. Full step-by-step method: verify by IP.
Allow or block in robots.txt
Match the exact token Claude-SearchBot in robots.txt:
# Block Claude-SearchBot site-wide
User-agent: Claude-SearchBot
Disallow: /# Explicitly allow Claude-SearchBot
User-agent: Claude-SearchBot
Allow: /For the allow-search-block-training combined pattern (and the Allow-directive gotcha that silently kills carve-outs), see the robots.txt guide. robots.txt governs whether Claude-SearchBot may fetch; llms.txt is the separate, curated map AI assistants read once allowed in.
Vendor documentation: https://support.claude.com/en/articles/8896518-does-anthropic-crawl-data-from-the-web-and-how-can-site-owners-block-the-crawler
The Anthropic family
Anthropic operates 4 distinct tokens in this roster, and they do not block each other: a robots.txt line for Claude-SearchBot does nothing to its siblings — each needs its own User-agent: entry (the robots.txt guide has combined patterns).
| Token | Role | robots.txt |
|---|---|---|
| ClaudeBot | Training | honors robots.txt |
| Claude-User | User action | claims robots compliance |
| anthropic-ai | Training | claims robots compliance |
Frequently asked questions
What is Claude-SearchBot?
Claude-SearchBot is Anthropic's ai search crawler. An AI search index that can cite and link your pages in answers (ChatGPT search, Perplexity, Claude search, Alexa, Siri). Blocking removes you from those answer surfaces — for most sites these are wanted crawlers.
Does Claude-SearchBot respect robots.txt?
Yes — Anthropic documents robots.txt compliance for Claude-SearchBot (vendor docs reviewed July 2026).
How do I block Claude-SearchBot?
Add 'User-agent: Claude-SearchBot' followed by 'Disallow: /' to your robots.txt. Use the exact token — substring variants of other tokens will not match.
How do I verify Claude-SearchBot traffic by IP?
Fetch Anthropic's published IP list for Claude-SearchBot and confirm the hit's source IP falls inside it — a Claude-SearchBot user-agent from any other IP is a spoofer.
Related bots
Same vendor, then other ai search crawlers — the full directory profiles all 34.