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ClaudeBot vs Google-Extended: Which AI Crawler Should You Care About?

Quick comparison

Google-Extended explained

Google-Extended is a user-agent token introduced in September 2023. It gives website owners control over whether Google can use their content to train Gemini and future generative AI models.

What Google-Extended does NOT affect:

• Regular Google Search ranking
• Crawling for traditional search results (Googlebot)

What it DOES affect:

• Training data for Google's LLMs (Gemini)
• Future generative AI products
• Some aspects of SGE (Search Generative Experience)

ClaudeBot explained

ClaudeBot is Anthropic's crawler that reads your website to answer questions in Claude AI (similar to ChatGPT).

Key differences from Google-Extended:

• ClaudeBot reads your site in real-time for each answer
• Not just training — it's live retrieval
• Blocking ClaudeBot immediately removes you from Claude answers

Which one matters more?

Verdict: For most businesses, Google-Extended has a larger potential reach because Google AI Overviews appear in 16% of desktop searches. However, Claude is growing rapidly.

How to allow both (recommended)

Add to your robots.txt:

User-agent: Google-Extended
Allow: /

User-agent: ClaudeBot
Allow: /

The bottom line

• Don't block either unless you have a specific legal or policy reason
• Both crawlers respect robots.txt and rate limits
• Allowing them costs nothing and can improve your AI visibility