AI crawlers · Anthropic
Is your site blocking ClaudeBot?
ClaudeBot is Anthropic's crawler for model training. Check your site now: we read your robots.txt exactly as ClaudeBot must, ask your server as each AI crawler, and look at your product pages.
Does blocking it hurt?
Model training Blocking ClaudeBot only opts your content out of Anthropic's model training. It doesn't remove you from Anthropic's AI answers (that's Claude-SearchBot). Whether to allow training is your choice, not a fault.
In our research, 4% of 2,159 online shops block ClaudeBot in robots.txt. See the research.
Allow or block it in robots.txt
Anthropic says ClaudeBot follows robots.txt, so the lines below decide whether it reads your shop.
To let it in (add to your robots.txt, at yourshop.com/robots.txt):
User-agent: ClaudeBot Allow: /
To keep it out:
User-agent: ClaudeBot Disallow: /
A more specific group wins: if your robots.txt also has a group for ClaudeBot, that group decides, not the “User-agent: *” rules. Our check reads it the same way (RFC 9309).
Other places it gets blocked
- Cloudflare. Cloudflare has blocked AI crawlers by default on new sites since July 2025, and it can also write your robots.txt for you. If your site uses Cloudflare, check its AI crawler settings first (MIT Technology Review).
- Security plugins and firewalls. WordPress security plugins and host firewalls sometimes refuse crawlers they don’t recognise, even when robots.txt allows them. Our check asks your server as each crawler and shows any refusal.
Where this comes from
Anthropic’s own documentation: support.claude.com. Anthropic help article: gathers content that could contribute to model training; blocking excludes future materials.
Anthropic’s other crawlers
- Claude-SearchBot (AI search and answers)
- Claude-User (Opens pages when a person asks)
We check 18 AI crawlers in one go. See them all · How the check works