Claude-SearchBot

Anthropic · Search-index crawler · Updated 2026-07-19

Claude-SearchBot is Anthropic’s search-index crawler — it crawls proactively to build the search index the assistant cites in answers. Allowing it is how your pages become citable.

User-agent string

Mozilla/5.0 AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko; compatible; Claude-SearchBot/1.0; +Claude-SearchBot@anthropic.com)

Source: community-documented (Anthropic describes the bot but does not publish the full string).

Does Claude-SearchBot respect robots.txt?

Respects robots.txt, per Anthropic’s crawler documentation.

Allow or block Claude-SearchBot

# Allow (recommended if you want Claude-SearchBot traffic)
User-agent: Claude-SearchBot
Allow: /

# Block
User-agent: Claude-SearchBot
Disallow: /

Verifying it’s really Claude-SearchBot

Same published IP ranges as all Anthropic crawlers: claude.com/crawling/bots.json. User-agent strings can be spoofed by anyone — identity claims are only trustworthy when the source IP matches the operator’s published ranges.

Fetch the published ranges and check a suspect IP against them:

curl -s https://claude.com/crawling/bots.json

What site owners should know

Claude-SearchBot builds the index behind Claude’s web search — the tier that determines whether Claude can retrieve and cite your pages in answers.

Scan your site to see how your robots.txt, content negotiation, and discovery files treat AI agents — including whether you’re blocking agents you meant to allow. Background: the robots.txt guide, how AI agents browse, and agent readiness.

All AI agent user-agents

ClaudeBot · Claude-User · Claude-SearchBot · GPTBot · OAI-SearchBot · ChatGPT-User · PerplexityBot · Perplexity-User · Google-Extended · Google-Agent · Google-CloudVertexBot · Meta-ExternalAgent · Meta-ExternalFetcher · MistralAI-User · Applebot · Applebot-Extended · Amazonbot · bingbot · DuckAssistBot · CCBot · Bytespider