ClaudeBot
Anthropic’s crawler, which reads public pages for Claude. Like the others it identifies itself and follows robots.txt.
Related terms
RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation)
A technique where the AI first searches a set of documents, then writes its answer from what it found. It is how assistants quote current information rather than whatever was in their training data.
Embedding
A way of turning text into numbers so a computer can tell that “web hosting” and “website server space” are about the same thing. It is what makes search by meaning possible rather than search by exact word.
Query Fan-Out
When an assistant turns one question into several searches behind the scenes, then combines what it finds. It means your page can be pulled into an answer about a question you never targeted.
AI Brand Mention
Your business being named in an AI answer, with or without a link. Worth tracking separately from traffic, because a mention can win the customer without ever producing a click.
Entity
A distinct thing a search engine can recognise: a company, a person, a place, a product. Being understood as an entity, rather than as a string of characters, is what lets you be recommended by name.
Answer Box
A boxed answer at the top of a results page, lifted from one page and credited to it. Winning one usually means having answered the question plainly and early rather than burying it.