Claude optimisation is the process of making your brand more likely to be mentioned, cited and recommended by Claude, the AI assistant built by Anthropic. As more people use Claude to research products, compare options and make buying decisions, getting your brand surfaced inside its answers has become a real growth channel, and one most competitors are still ignoring.
Here is what it means and how it works.
Why Claude matters for brands
Claude is one of the fastest-growing AI assistants in the world, used by millions of people through the Claude app, the API and a growing list of third-party tools. When someone asks Claude “what are the best luxury jewellery brands in London?” or “which agency should I hire for fashion SEO?”, Claude pulls from web sources and its training data to generate an answer. If your brand is not present in those sources, you do not exist in the conversation.
Unlike Google, there is no list of ten blue links. Claude usually gives one synthesised answer, often naming a small handful of brands. Being one of those named brands is the entire game.
How Claude chooses which brands to mention
Claude favours brands that are clearly described, frequently referenced and well-documented across the open web. That means strong content on your own site, consistent mentions on trusted third-party sites, structured information about who you are and what you do, and a clear connection between your brand name and the topics you want to be known for.
Claude also uses web search inside many of its products, so brands with strong traditional SEO and clean, well-structured content have a head start.
What Claude optimisation actually involves
A proper Claude optimisation strategy usually covers four areas.
The first is on-site content. Your website needs clear, factual, well-structured pages that explain what you do, who you serve and what makes you credible. FAQ-style content, comparison pages and detailed service descriptions all perform well.
The second is entity building. Claude needs to recognise your brand as a real, distinct entity. That means consistent NAP information, Organization schema, a Wikipedia presence where possible and strong sameAs links across your digital footprint.
The third is off-site citations. Claude pulls heavily from trusted third-party sources, including press, directories, review sites and editorial content. Getting your brand mentioned in those places, with the right context, is essential.
The fourth is prompt testing. The only way to know if Claude is recommending you is to ask it. Regular prompt testing across the queries your customers are actually using gives you a real measure of visibility and shows you where the gaps are.
How Claude optimisation differs from ChatGPT optimisation
There is a lot of overlap, but Claude tends to weight depth, accuracy and source quality more heavily than some other AI search engines. It is generally more cautious about making claims it cannot back up, which means brands with strong editorial coverage, clear credentials and well-documented expertise tend to do particularly well.
The bottom line
Claude optimisation is generative engine optimisation applied specifically to the way Claude understands, retrieves and recommends brands. As AI assistants take more of the search journey away from Google, the brands that invest in being visible inside these conversations now will be the ones recommended by default in two or three years. The earlier you start, the harder you are to displace.
