How to Get Your Business Cited by Claude

Claude leans on training data more than the other assistants, which makes what the web already says about you the deciding factor.

What Claude actually does

Claude searches the web for roughly a third of its answers, which is far less than ChatGPT. It also sends about two thirds of its citations to brand-owned pages rather than to forums or aggregators.

That combination is unusual. Most engines cite third-party sources most of the time. Claude cites your own site more often, but only looks at all in a minority of answers. The practical consequence is that the quality of your own pages matters more here than elsewhere, while the frequency of retrieval is lower.

Where the rest of the answer comes from

The other two thirds of Claude answers are written from training data. Training data is assembled from what has been published about you over years, largely by other people. So even an engine that cites your own pages relies on third-party coverage for most of its knowledge.

Claude-SearchBot is the crawler to allow, and Anthropic states that blocking it may reduce your visibility and accuracy in search results. Fewer sources are cited per answer than most platforms, and it tends to weigh primary sources more heavily than aggregators.

What to do

Two things. First, make sure your own pages state plainly what you do, who you serve, and what you charge, because Claude is more likely than its competitors to cite you directly. Second, invest in third-party coverage, because that is what shapes the two thirds of answers that never search. The two halves of the strategy are different and both matter.

Frequently Asked Questions

How often does Claude search the web?
Claude searches live for roughly a third of its answers, which is considerably less than ChatGPT at more than 95 percent. The rest are written from training data, so what third parties have published about your business over time shapes most Claude answers.
Does Claude cite my website or other sources?
About two thirds of Claude's citations go to brand-owned pages rather than forums or aggregators, which is unusual among AI assistants. That makes the accuracy and clarity of your own pages more valuable here, even though the engine retrieves them less often.
What is Claude-SearchBot?
Claude-SearchBot is Anthropic's search crawler. Anthropic states that blocking it may reduce your site's visibility and accuracy in user search results. If AI visibility is a goal, allow it in robots.txt and confirm your firewall is not blocking it independently.

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