# Claude-User vs GoogleOther

Claude-User and GoogleOther compared on 13 documented fields, from 19 claims, last verified 2026-09-15.

| Field | Claude-User | GoogleOther | Comparison |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| cites_sources | not_documented | not documented | different |
| honours_crawl_delay | yes | no | different |
| observed_fetches_robots_txt | not documented | no | different |
| observed_requested_mcp_endpoint | not documented | yes | different |
| publishes_ip_list | yes | yes | same |
| purpose_documented | user_fetch | mixed | different |
| reads_llms_txt | not_documented | not documented | different |
| respects_robots_txt | yes | yes | same |
| robots_txt_token | not documented | GoogleOther | different |
| separate_search_and_training_tokens | not_documented | not_documented | same |
| user_agent_string_full | not_documented | not documented | different |
| user_fetch_exception_documented | no | not documented | different |
| verifiable_by_rdns | not_documented | yes | different |

## Differences

| Field | Claude-User statement | GoogleOther statement |
| --- | --- | --- |
| cites_sources | Anthropic does not publish whether Claude responses cite pages fetched by Claude-User. | not documented |
| honours_crawl_delay | Claude-User respects the Crawl-delay directive in robots.txt when fetching pages. | Google does not support the robots.txt Crawl-delay directive for GoogleOther. |
| observed_fetches_robots_txt | not documented | GoogleOther made 93 requests to Rattlesnakes By Mail between 2026-09-13T20:00Z and 2026-09-15T09:00Z and fetched /robots.txt on none of those requests. GoogleOther's first request to Rattlesnakes By Mail was the home page at 2026-09-14T12:03:30Z. |
| observed_requested_mcp_endpoint | not documented | GoogleOther requested the /mcp endpoint of Rattlesnakes By Mail twice between 2026-09-13T20:00Z and 2026-09-15T09:00Z, at 2026-09-14T15:07:30Z and at 2026-09-14T18:27:49Z. Rattlesnakes By Mail returned status 405 to both GoogleOther requests for /mcp. |
| purpose_documented | Claude-User accesses websites in response to questions that individual users ask Claude. | GoogleOther is a generic crawler that Google product teams use to fetch publicly accessible content from sites. |
| reads_llms_txt | Anthropic does not publish whether Claude-User reads llms.txt files. | not documented |
| robots_txt_token | not documented | The robots.txt token for GoogleOther is GoogleOther. |
| user_agent_string_full | Anthropic does not publish a full user agent string for Claude-User. | not documented |
| user_fetch_exception_documented | Anthropic applies the same robots.txt statement to Claude-User as to ClaudeBot and Claude-SearchBot and documents no exception for user-initiated fetches. | not documented |
| verifiable_by_rdns | Anthropic does not publish a reverse-DNS verification method for Claude-User. | GoogleOther requests are verifiable by reverse DNS lookup resolving to googlebot.com, google.com, or googleusercontent.com. |

## Sources

- https://claude.com/crawling/bots.json
- https://developers.google.com/crawling/docs/crawlers-fetchers/verifying-googlebot
- https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2019/07/a-note-on-unsupported-rules-in-robotstxt
- https://developers.google.com/search/docs/crawling-indexing/google-common-crawlers
- https://developers.google.com/static/crawling/ipranges/common-crawlers.json
- https://rattlesnakesbymail.com/observed/googleother
- https://support.claude.com/en/articles/8896518-does-anthropic-crawl-content-from-the-web-and-how-can-site-owners-block-the-crawler