How to get cited by Claude

Know what a Claude citation actually isClaude answers from two places. For stable facts — "what is a heat pump" — it draws on training data: knowledge absorbed from the web. For current facts — hours, prices, who's open now — it searches the live web, and when it does, it cites the sources it read, with inline links. A citation means Claude found your page, trusted it as a source for the fact, and linked you.

Feed both of Claude's knowledge pathsTraining data rewards the stable and the consistent: facts that have been published the same way, in many places, over a long time. Live search rewards the current and the findable. So do both: keep your facts identical everywhere they appear (your site, your profile, directories), and keep the current ones on pages that index well and load fast. One fact, published consistently, serves both paths at once.

Let Anthropic's fetchers inAnthropic documents two agents: ClaudeBot, which crawls for training and indexing, and Claude-User, which fetches a specific page when someone asks Claude to read it. Both respect robots.txt. Make sure yours allows them at least on your public pages — blocking every AI crawler in robots.txt makes you uncitable in Claude too. Check where you stand in seconds with our free AI Crawler Access Checker, which reports on nine AI crawlers including ClaudeBot.

Put the quotable sentence firstClaude lifts short, self-contained statements into its answers — from training and from search. "Smith Heating installs heat pumps across the Lehigh Valley, with free estimates within 24 hours" survives the quote. "We care about our customers" does not. Lead every section with a clean "is/are/does" sentence — a definition or a direct answer — then expand. Facts that stand alone get picked; facts buried in a paragraph get passed over.

Corroborate your facts across the webClaude's training data is a vote: facts repeated consistently across independent sources win. Your website is the primary source, but directories, review platforms, local news, and trade associations are the second votes. Keep name, address, phone, hours, and services identical everywhere — mismatches are votes against you. Reviews help too: customers quote your hours and prices, and Claude can read those as confirmation.

Be fresh and visibly datedFor the things Claude fetches live — seasonal offers, prices, hours — recency is a filter. Put visible dates on your content and refresh service pages at least seasonally. An actively maintained page reads as a trustworthy source; an abandoned one with identical text looks like nobody stands behind it anymore.

Ask the question yourself, monthlyOnce a month, open Claude and ask what your customers ask: "who's the best plumber near me," "how much does a heat pump cost here." Note presence, mention, or silence — for you and your competitors. Claude's knowledge lags behind the live web, so check the trend over months, never a single day. Ask the same question in web-search mode and in plain chat mode; the two answers draw on different knowledge paths, and you want to win both.