Claude: Stop AI from Recommending Discontinued Products
AI Recommends Discontinued Products on Claude? Here's why it happens, the fix, and how to prevent it.
Claude Context
Make your website visible and citable by Claude, Anthropic's AI assistant known for nuanced understanding and detailed responses.
Allow Claude-SearchBot and Claude-User in robots.txt so Claude can find and read your pages
Focus on demonstrating genuine expertise (E-E-A-T signals)
Provide detailed, well-researched content with citations
Why This Problem Matters
Claude are recommending products or services you no longer offer, frustrating potential customers. Learn how to clean up your AI presence.
Why This Happens in Claude
If a retired product's page still exists and still reads like a live offer, Claude has no signal that it's gone. It answers from Claude's web search, which Claude-SearchBot crawls for, where the old page may still be the clearest match.
Signs You Have This Problem in Claude
Claude recommends a product you've retired
Claude recommends products you've sunset or discontinued
Users ask about features from deprecated versions
Old product names appear in AI recommendations
Claude doesn't know about your latest product lineup
How to Fix This in Claude
Follow these Claude-specific solutions:
Mark discontinued products clearly and point to the replacement
Redirect retired product pages to their successor where one exists
Redirect discontinued product pages to current alternatives
Create 'product sunset' announcements with migration paths
Update all references to discontinued products
Add 'discontinued' notices and alternatives to old pages
Build authority for current products with fresh content
Claude Technical Details
Anthropic documents three agents that all honour robots.txt: Claude-SearchBot for search results, ClaudeBot for training, and Claude-User for pages a user asks Claude to read.
Claude-SearchBot
Search / answers
Improves the quality of Claude's search results.
ClaudeBot
Model training
Collects public web content for model training.
Claude-User
User-requested fetch
Retrieves a page when a Claude user asks a question that needs it.
robots.txt rule to stay eligible for Claude answers:
User-agent: Claude-SearchBot
Allow: /Source: support.claude.com
Prevent This Problem in Claude
Create a product lifecycle content strategy
Plan content updates when discontinuing products
Maintain redirects for all deprecated URLs
Test AI knowledge after product changes
Helpful Resources
How-To Guides
Checklists
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Get Your AI Visibility AuditFrequently Asked Questions
Why is this happening in Claude?
If a retired product's page still exists and still reads like a live offer, Claude has no signal that it's gone. It answers from Claude's web search, which Claude-SearchBot crawls for, where the old page may still be the clearest match.
What is the first fix to prioritize in Claude?
Mark discontinued products clearly and point to the replacement