How to get cited by Claude (Anthropic)
Claude is Anthropic's AI assistant, used by millions of professionals as a primary research tool and increasingly inside enterprise software. Getting cited by Claude requires the same foundations as ChatGPT plus specific attention to anthropic-ai crawler permissions and Claude-Web visit handling.
Claude is Anthropic's AI assistant, used by an estimated 50 million monthly users plus integration in hundreds of enterprise tools. While ChatGPT dominates consumer AI search, Claude has become the preferred research tool for professionals: lawyers, doctors, developers, and analysts who prioritize answer quality over speed.
1. Allow all three Anthropic crawlers
Anthropic operates three distinct crawlers:
- ClaudeBot: the training corpus crawler. Used to keep the foundation model updated.
- anthropic-ai: the assistant crawler. Used when a Claude user asks a question that requires fresh data.
- Claude-Web: the active browse crawler. Used when the user explicitly asks Claude to browse the web.
Add each to robots.txt with an explicit Allow directive. Many sites block one or more by default through privacy plugins.
2. Ship the foundation layer
Same as ChatGPT and Perplexity: server rendered HTML, complete Schema.org @graph, answer paragraphs at top of every page, fast time to first byte.
3. Prioritize content quality and source authority
Claude is biased toward high-quality sources. Industry association membership, peer-reviewed research, trade press mentions, and recognized accreditation badges all contribute to authority weighting. For medical and legal practices, board certifications and accredited training programs matter more in Claude than in other engines.
4. Ship a comprehensive llms.txt
Anthropic explicitly references llms.txt in published documentation as the recommended way for sites to communicate with their assistants. A well-structured llms.txt with business summary, services, providers, pricing, key pages, and external corroboration links is particularly impactful for Claude.
5. Verify citation manually
Claude does not provide explicit source footnotes the way Perplexity does. The cleanest way to verify citation state is to ask Claude the target query directly and read the response. The KailxLabs citation tracking dashboard logs Claude responses daily during the 30 day tracking window.
Timing expectation
Claude's retrieval index updates less frequently than ChatGPT, so first citations after launch take longer (typically day 20 to 35). Claude is included as one of the four engines for the KailxLabs citation guarantee.