By
Austin Coker
Reading time: 14 min
You ask Claude for the best tools in your category for a company your size. Claude runs a quick web search, reads a handful of pages and returns a shortlist. Your biggest competitor is second on the list. Your brand isn’t mentioned.
Claude SEO is the work of getting your brand found, read and cited when Claude searches the web to answer a question. Because Claude’s web search runs on Brave Search, Claude SEO comes down to two things: ranking in Brave for the queries Claude writes, and getting your brand named on the third-party pages Brave returns for them.
Claude’s audience is growing fast. Similarweb data reported by TechCrunch put Claude’s mobile apps at 11.3 million daily active users on March 2, 2026, up 183% from about 4 million at the start of the year. Anthropic said daily active users had more than tripled since the beginning of 2026 and paid subscribers had doubled (source: TechCrunch).
In this article, you’ll find how Claude web search works, which search engine sits behind it, what the Brave Search API is, what one large study shows about how Claude picks citations, eight steps to get your brand cited and how to track whether it’s working.
Claude decides on its own when a prompt needs a web search. When it searches, it gets results from Brave Search, reads a short extract of each page and cites a portion of them.
To get cited by Claude, rank in Brave’s top 10 for “best” and “top” queries in your category, make sure Brave and Anthropic’s crawlers can reach your pages, and get your brand named on the third-party lists and reviews that rank for those queries. In the largest public study so far, fresher pages and pages that showed up across several related searches were cited more often.
Claude web search is a tool Claude can call while it writes a response. According to Anthropic’s web search tool documentation, Claude decides when to search based on the prompt. It can run several searches in a row, using earlier results to shape later queries, and responses that use web search always include citations to their sources.
In the Claude apps, web search is a setting users can turn on, and Claude then searches when a question needs current information (source: Claude Help Center). For a buyer asking “what are the best project management tools for agencies”, that usually means Claude searches, reads and answers with links.
The searches Claude writes look a lot like the searches a buyer would type. A third-party study by OppAlerts analyzed 1,100 Claude Sonnet 5 responses and their 2,290 searches (source: OppAlerts, July 14, 2026). It found that:
Each search returned around 20 results, which the search tool filtered down to about 9 before the model saw them. For each of those pages, Claude received an extract of roughly 4 KB of text. That is a short window. Claude is not reading your whole page.
Splitting one prompt into several related searches is a form of query fan-out. We explain how it works across AI platforms in our guide to query fan-out.
Claude’s web search uses Brave Search. Anthropic’s web search tool documentation doesn’t name the provider, but the public record is consistent.
When Claude’s web search launched in March 2025, Anthropic added Brave Search to its subprocessor list, effective March 19, 2025. Developer Simon Willison then ran a test search and found that the ten citations Claude showed exactly matched Brave’s results for the same query. He also found that Claude’s search tool definition was titled “BraveSearchParams” (source: Simon Willison). TechCrunch reported the same evidence on March 21, 2025 (source: TechCrunch).
The OppAlerts study adds that Anthropic’s Trust Center still lists Brave Search as a subprocessor supporting web search, and that Anthropic’s Claude for Government documentation says its web search connector “calls the Brave Search API”. The study also checked the data directly: 95.8% of the results Claude’s tool delivered appeared in Brave’s top 20 for the identical query, matched URL for URL.
For your team, this changes where you look. Your Google rankings tell you how you perform in Google. Brave runs its own index, so your Brave rankings for the same queries can look very different. If you want to know whether Claude will find you, check Brave.
The Brave Search API gives developers structured access to Brave’s search results. Brave describes its index as independent and first-party, with more than 40 billion pages, and says many other search API providers rely on its API in the background (source: Brave). Claude is one of the products that sends its searches there.
How Brave finds pages affects every brand that wants to show up in Claude. A few details from Brave’s crawler documentation matter most:
Brave has no equivalent of Google Search Console, and you can’t submit a sitemap. The one direct tool is a submit URL form that asks Brave to re-fetch a page. An analysis by MERJ found that the Web Discovery Project also picks up URLs from other search engines’ results pages that opted-in Brave users see, which means ranking in Google can help Brave discover you (source: MERJ).
The practical result: a clean technical setup for Google helps you in Brave. A page that Googlebot can’t reach, or that nobody links to, is unlikely to show up in Claude.
The best public data comes from the OppAlerts study. It covers one model, Claude Sonnet 5, on one family of “best provider” prompts, so treat the numbers as strong signals, not fixed rules.
A page at Brave rank 1 was delivered to Claude 89.4% of the time. At rank 10, that fell to 46.1%. At rank 20, it was 4.0%. If you rank on page two of Brave for a buying query, Claude almost never sees you.
Among Brave’s top 5 results, pages older than 24 months were delivered 74.7% of the time, compared with 86.5% for pages under 6 months old. Titles that contained most of the query’s words also did better in positions 6 to 10.
Claude cited 51.2% of the pages delivered to it. Pages returned by two or more of Claude’s searches in the same response were cited 80.5% of the time, compared with 48.9% for pages returned by one search. Showing up across several related queries made the biggest difference in the study.
59.8% of citations went to third-party pages such as listicles, roundups and reviews. Only 37.4% of the brands Claude recommended had one of their own pages delivered to the model. Most brands were recommended because someone else wrote about them.
How they were mentioned matters too. Among recommended brands that could only have come from the text of pages Claude read, 83.7% were named in that text while only 41.7% were linked. A plain mention of your brand on a page Claude reads does the work. In the study, Claude never followed links to other pages.
Within ranked lists, brands in positions 1 to 5 became Claude recommendations 22% to 25% of the time. Positions 6 to 10 converted at 17.5%, and after position 10 the rate dropped to 7.6%. Being in the first ten matters more than being first.
Brave’s FAQ, discussion and video sections contributed almost nothing to what Claude received. The organic web results are what count.
These eight steps follow from how Claude searches and what the data shows. Start with the first three. They decide whether Claude can find you at all.
Build a list of the questions a buyer would ask Claude about your category, then rewrite them the way Claude does. “Best payroll software for startups 2026” is a more realistic target than “payroll software”. Combine an opener (“best” or “top”), your category words, a segment (“for startups”, “for agencies”) and the year.
Check where you rank in Brave for each one. Treat anything past position 10 as invisible to Claude. If you don’t have a page that directly answers “best [category] for [audience]”, write one and include your product honestly alongside the alternatives.
Since Brave won’t crawl what Googlebot can’t, audit robots.txt for Googlebot blocks on pages you want cited, and remove stray noindex tags from important pages, especially after a site migration or CMS change.
When you publish or update a key page, submit it through Brave’s submit URL form. It’s the only direct lever you have, so use it for every page that targets a buying query.
Anthropic runs three crawlers with different jobs (source: Anthropic):
All three honor robots.txt and the Crawl-delay extension. Anthropic says blocking its IP addresses may not work reliably, so manage access in robots.txt for each bot and each subdomain. If you want Claude to cite you, allow Claude-User and Claude-SearchBot. ClaudeBot is a separate decision about training data.
Pages that show up across several of Claude’s searches get cited far more often. One general services page won’t match “best accounting software for agencies” and “best accounting software for ecommerce” at the same time. Separate pages will.
Build a dedicated page for each service, product line and core use case, with a title and opening that match how buyers phrase the question. We used this approach for Constant Hire: one landing page per service with detailed FAQs, backed by guest posts on industry sites. Within four months the recruiter had tracked more than $70,000 in revenue from ChatGPT referrals (see the case study). The platform was different, but the mechanics are the same: specific pages for specific questions, confirmed by other sites.
Most Claude citations go to third-party pages, so the roundups ranking in Brave for your category are some of your most valuable placements.
Search your target queries in Brave and list every roundup, comparison and review page in the top 10. Then work to get included: pitch the author, offer product access, contribute expert input or earn a review. Aim for the first ten items on each list, since that is where the study saw recommendations hold up.
A link from a third-party page helps in Google. For Claude, a clear mention of your brand name does most of the work, because Claude reads a text extract, not your backlink profile.
Pursue mentions where your buyers read: industry publications, partner pages, podcasts with written show notes and expert roundups. Make sure each mention says what you do and who you serve. “Acme, a payroll platform for startups” gives Claude more to work with than “Acme” on its own.
In the study, pages under 6 months old were delivered noticeably more often than pages older than 24 months. Set a schedule to review your comparison, product and category pages.
Update the substance, not just the date: pricing, features, screenshots and examples. Update the year in titles where it makes sense, then resubmit the URL to Brave so it re-fetches the new version.
Claude gets roughly 4 KB of text per page, which is about 600 to 700 words. If your page opens with a long brand story, Claude may never reach the part that says what you do.
Lead with the facts a buyer needs: what the product is, who it’s for, what it costs and how it compares. On comparison pages, put the summary table or shortlist near the top. On product pages, state your category and audience in the first paragraph.
Claude has no Search Console for brands, so you need to piece the picture together.
Claude is one AI platform. Your buyers also use ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Google’s AI features. Each pulls from a different mix of sources, but the work overlaps: specific pages for specific questions, strong rankings for buying queries and mentions on trusted third-party sites help across all of them.
That is why we run SEO, generative engine optimization and PPC as one program at 95 Projects. Treating Claude as a separate project duplicates work. Treating it as one input into a single AI search program lets the same pages and placements earn visibility in Google, Brave, Claude and ChatGPT at once. If you’re weighing how the disciplines differ, our breakdown of GEO vs SEO covers it.
We work with ecommerce, SaaS and B2B service brands doing $1M to $50M a year, and our founder, Austin Coker, is on every account. If you’re comparing partners, our list of the best AI SEO agencies is a useful place to start. If you want to know where your brand stands in Claude and Brave today, book a call.
Austin Coker is the CEO and founder of 95 Projects. He has worked in SEO since 2020, when he built and sold an ecommerce brand that grew mainly through search. He founded 95 Projects in 2022 to help SaaS, ecommerce, and B2B service companies show up wherever their buyers search, from Google to ChatGPT and AI Overviews.
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Claude’s web search uses Brave Search. Anthropic added Brave Search as a subprocessor in March 2025, independent testing found Claude’s citations matched Brave’s results, and Anthropic’s Claude for Government documentation says its web search connector calls the Brave Search API. Anthropic’s main tool documentation doesn’t name the provider.
The Brave Search API gives developers structured access to Brave’s independent index, which Brave says covers more than 40 billion pages. Claude uses Brave to power its web search, and Brave says many other search API providers rely on its API in the background.
No. Brave has no search console and doesn’t accept sitemap submissions. You can ask Brave to re-fetch individual pages through its submit URL form. Brave also won’t crawl anything Googlebot can’t crawl, so your robots.txt rules for Google affect Brave too.
No. Claude decides whether to search based on the prompt, and web search has to be enabled. Questions about current products, prices and “best” options tend to trigger a search, and when Claude does search, its response includes citations.
Yes. ClaudeBot collects content that may be used for training, and blocking it excludes your future content from training data. Claude-User and Claude-SearchBot are separate crawlers tied to search and user requests, so you can block ClaudeBot and still allow the other two.
Links aren’t the main factor. In the OppAlerts study, recommended brands were named in plain text far more often than they were linked, and Claude never followed links from the pages it read. Ranking well in Brave and being named on the third-party pages Claude reads matter more.
The fundamentals overlap: crawlable pages, strong rankings and useful content. The differences are where you need to rank and how you get chosen. Claude SEO means ranking in Brave, targeting the “best” and “top” phrasing Claude uses, getting into the first ten items on third-party lists and putting key facts near the top of each page.
