Websites blocking Claude-SearchBot
Anthropic's search crawler, used to improve the quality of search results surfaced to Claude users.
Operated by Anthropic · Search and AI assistant · operator documentation
3.90%
block Claude-SearchBot
961K of 24.68 million domains with a known robots.txt policy
0.11%
block it by name
28,332 domains, the rest inherit a blanket
* block
0.41%
restrict it by name
99,996 domains name it and close some of its paths
0.85%
name it in robots.txt
209K domains give it rules of their own
Data for Oct 2026. All four percentages
divide by the same 24.68 million domains. Blocked counts both
explicit User-agent: Claude-SearchBot blocks and blanket
* blocks the crawler inherits.
Blocking trend
2%
4%
6%
Aug 2026
Sep 2026
Oct 2026
Share of domains with a known robots.txt policy
blocking Claude-SearchBot in each monthly crawl. The denominator moves with each crawl and is
defined in the methodology.
Historical mentions, HTTP Archive
0.3%
0.5%
0.8%
1%
Apr 2025
Aug 2025
Jan 2026
May 2026
Sep 2026
Share of sites in each month's
HTTP Archive crawl whose robots.txt named
Claude-SearchBot. This series counts
mentions only (the archive keeps no rule text), comes from a different population than our own
crawl above, and the two are never merged.
High-authority sites blocking Claude-SearchBot by name
| Domain | OPROpen Page Rank | Blocking since |
|---|---|---|
| nytimes.com | 9.28/10 | Aug 2026 |
| amazon.co.jp | 9.16/10 | Sep 2026 |
| amazon.de | 9.13/10 | Oct 2026 |
| usatoday.com | 9.08/10 | Sep 2026 |
| wired.com | 9.07/10 | Oct 2026 |
| apnews.com | 9.02/10 | Sep 2026 |
| upenn.edu | 9.00/10 | Oct 2026 |
| naver.com | 8.99/10 | Oct 2026 |
| quora.com | 8.92/10 | Aug 2026 |
| uol.com.br | 8.92/10 | Oct 2026 |
| huffpost.com | 8.91/10 | Aug 2026 |
| newyorker.com | 8.90/10 | Oct 2026 |
| mashable.com | 8.87/10 | Sep 2026 |
| francetvinfo.fr | 8.87/10 | Aug 2026 |
| arstechnica.com | 8.84/10 | Aug 2026 |
| wikihow.com | 8.81/10 | Aug 2026 |
| pcmag.com | 8.80/10 | Aug 2026 |
| nikkei.com | 8.79/10 | Oct 2026 |
| rfi.fr | 8.73/10 | Aug 2026 |
| metro.co.uk | 8.72/10 | Aug 2026 |
| vanityfair.com | 8.64/10 | Oct 2026 |
| launchpad.net | 8.63/10 | Oct 2026 |
| adage.com | 8.62/10 | Aug 2026 |
| videolan.org | 8.60/10 | Oct 2026 |
| nationalgeographic.org | 8.55/10 | Oct 2026 |
| imageshack.us | 8.54/10 | Aug 2026 |
| openstreetmap.fr | 8.54/10 | Oct 2026 |
| dejure.org | 8.53/10 | Aug 2026 |
| dn.se | 8.53/10 | Oct 2026 |
| architecturaldigest.com | 8.52/10 | Oct 2026 |
Sites whose robots.txt names Claude-SearchBot (or a legacy
alias) with a full block, ranked by Open Page Rank. Sites blocking every crawler with a blanket
* rule are counted above but not listed here. Since dates start at our first
observation of the rule.