ClaudeBot vs Claude-SearchBot
In the census run that finished 2026-10-24, robots.txt closed the homepage to ClaudeBot on 591 of the 4,501 top sites that serve a robots.txt (13.1%), and to Claude-SearchBot on 260 (5.8%).
| ClaudeBot | Claude-SearchBot | |
|---|---|---|
| Operator | Anthropic | Anthropic |
| What it is | training crawler | answer-engine crawler |
| What it does | Anthropic training | Claude search index |
| How a request can be verified | Its operator publishes the IP ranges it crawls from (https://claude.com/crawling/bots.json), so a request carrying the name can be checked against that list. | Its operator publishes the IP ranges it crawls from (https://claude.com/crawling/bots.json), so a request carrying the name can be checked against that list. |
| robots.txt closes the homepage (of sites with a robots.txt) | 591 (13.1%) | 260 (5.8%) |
| Refused at the door (of sites that answered a browser) | 1,124 (20.2%) | not requested as this identity |
Top 10,000 sites, census of 2026-10-24. “Refused at the door” is a non-2xx answer to a client declaring that name, from CrawlCheck’s own addresses, where the browser got 2xx. Every crawler on the radar.
Let ClaudeBot in and keep Claude-SearchBot out
User-agent: ClaudeBot
Allow: /
User-agent: Claude-SearchBot
Disallow: /A crawler obeys only the most specific group that names it and ignores * entirely. If your User-agent: * group has Disallow rules, repeat them under ClaudeBot, or naming it drops them. Swap the two names to do the reverse.
Check what your own site tells both: scan it free. Catalogue data CC BY 4.0 at /ai-crawlers.json.