How to Get Recommended by Claude

Short answer: When Claude searches the web, it reads live pages and cites them in its answer. So: (1) let Anthropic's search bots reach your site, (2) ask Claude your buyers' questions and see which pages it cites, and (3) earn a place on those pages and make your own pages the clearest answer. No one can promise Claude will name you, but these steps give it a fair chance.

Not sure if Claude names you today? MadeTheAnswer's free check asks Claude, ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini 5 buyer-style questions, one run each. We work out your category and suggest likely competitors. Your score shows on screen, and the full report comes by email. Email required, no credit card. It's a one-run snapshot, not a verdict.

How Claude uses the web

Claude can answer from what it learned in training, or it can search the web first.

Anthropic says Claude searches when a question needs current facts, including "information about specific organizations, people, or products that might have changed." For stable facts, it often answers without searching (Claude Docs). Buyer questions like "best tool for X" are often the kind where search helps.

When Claude does search, Anthropic says "every response includes citations," with links to the sources and quotes where it fits (Claude Help Center). In some Claude versions, the user turns web search on. In the newer Claude experience there is no toggle, and Claude searches "when it helps" (Claude Help Center).

That gives you two goals:

• Be cited: one of your pages shows up as a source.
• Be recommended: Claude names your product in the answer.

Step 1: Let Anthropic's search bots in

Anthropic runs three bots, and each one does a different job (Claude Help Center):

If you want to show up in Claude's answers, don't block Claude-SearchBot or Claude-User. Blocking ClaudeBot is a separate choice about training.

A robots.txt that allows the two search bots looks like this:

User-agent: Claude-SearchBot
Allow: /

User-agent: Claude-User
Allow: /

Things to check with your developer:

• Every subdomain. Anthropic says robots.txt rules apply per subdomain, so check each one (like www and docs).
• Firewall or CDN. Anthropic says its bots follow robots.txt, and that blocking by IP address "may not work correctly," because it can stop the bot from reading your robots.txt at all. If your bot protection blocks AI crawlers by default, review that setting.

Step 2: Ask Claude what buyers ask

Get a baseline before you change anything.

1. Write 10 buyer questions, in buyer words: "best [category] for [use case]," "alternatives to [competitor]."
2. Make sure search runs. Anthropic suggests adding "Search the web" to your prompt if you want Claude to search (Claude Help Center). Also try once without it, since many buyers won't type that.
3. Ask each question more than once, in new chats. Answers change from run to run.
4. Write down three things: Were you named? Who was named instead? Which pages were cited?

Step 3: Study the pages Claude cites

Open every cited page and sort it:

• Your pages. Do they describe you correctly and clearly?
• Competitor pages. What do they answer better than you?
• "Best of" lists, reviews and comparisons. If you're missing from these, that's a likely reason you're missing from the answer.
• Forums and Q&A threads. Places where real users talk about tools like yours.

After 10 questions, the same sites usually repeat. Those are your targets.

Step 4: Make your pages easy to cite

Claude quotes short bits of text from the pages it cites (Claude Docs). Make those bits easy to find.

• Say what you are in one sentence: "[Brand] is a [category] for [customer] that [does the main job]."
• Put the answer first. Then the details.
• Use real facts. Prices, features, limits, who it's for and who it isn't for.
• Keep it current. Old prices or features lead to wrong answers.
• Use plain text. Don't hide key facts only in images or behind tabs that need clicks.

Step 5: Earn honest mentions

You can't control what other sites say, but you can earn a fair place:

• Ask to be added to "best of" lists where you truly fit. Send facts, not hype.
• Offer reviewers a demo or trial.
• Help in communities where you have real experience. Say who you are, and don't spam links.
• Ask happy customers for honest reviews. Never write fake ones or pay for good ones.

Step 6: Check again on a schedule

Run the same questions, the same way, every few weeks. Track how often you're named, who's named instead, and which pages are cited. A small change can be noise, so look at the trend.

How MadeTheAnswer helps

MadeTheAnswer does Steps 2, 3 and 6 for you on Claude, ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini. It uses each provider's official API with web search on, so results can differ a bit from the Claude app.

• Free check: 5 questions, one run each on all 4 assistants. You get one free check per website and one per email each week. There are also 5 free checks a day for everyone. If today's are full, come back after the daily reset at midnight UTC (5 PM Arizona time).
• Paid weekly reports (from $29/month): each question is asked 3 times every week, so you see a trend, plus a weekly Fix plan with drafts you can edit. See plans and prices

Each assistant's score links to the actual AI answers. MadeTheAnswer doesn't control what Claude says and doesn't promise rankings. It shows you where you stand.

FAQ

Does Claude search the web? Yes, when a question needs current information. Its answers then include citations to the pages it used.

Should I block ClaudeBot? That's about training, not search. Anthropic says blocking ClaudeBot keeps your future pages out of training data. To show up in search answers, the bots that matter are Claude-SearchBot and Claude-User.

Which search engine does Claude use? Anthropic's list of outside service providers (in its Trust Center) names more than one web search provider, including Brave Search. Its help center says image results are powered by Bing. So it's worth checking that Brave can find your pages, but don't treat any one index as the whole story.

Can someone guarantee Claude will recommend me? No. Be careful with anyone who promises a spot in AI answers.

Related guides

• How to Get Recommended by Perplexity — Perplexity shows its sources, which makes this kind of work easier to check.
• How to Get Your Product Recommended by ChatGPT: A Step-by-Step Plan — The same kind of plan for ChatGPT.
• How to Track AI Visibility: A Plain-English Guide — How to track mentions on Claude and the other assistants together.
• AI Crawled My Site, but I Get No ChatGPT Traffic — A crawl is not the same as being named in an answer.

See if Claude names you

See a sample report → (demo data)

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Sources: Claude Help Center, "Does Anthropic crawl data from the web, and how can site owners block the crawler?"; Claude Help Center, "Enable and use web search"; Claude Docs, "Web search tool".