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We did some research. Here's what we found:
Claude's citations look almost exactly like Brave's top 10, and almost nothing like Google's.
We started with 200 Claude AI-visibility responses, 190 of which returned results from both engines. For each task, we pulled Claude's own fan-out search query and re-ran that exact query through both the Brave and Google SERP APIs (Google via Firecrawl). We then measured how many of the URLs Claude actually cited turned up in each engine's top 10, and top 20.
Brave's top 10 is where Claude's citations live. Across 1,155 citations:
- 77% in the top 10. Exact URL match.
- 92% in the top 20. Widening to two pages of Brave results captures nearly everything Claude cited.
- 83% at the domain level. If Claude mentions a brand with a link attached, that brand is usually already ranking in Brave for the query.
Google, on the other hand, doesn't predict which pages Claude cites. Same citations, same queries, different engine: 27% appear in Google's top 10, and 42% match at the domain level. That's roughly a third of Brave's rate on identical inputs. Your Google position is not a useless signal for Claude, but it is a weak one.
You could obviously object and point out that search engines agree with each other constantly, so all we've really found is that Claude cites decent pages and decent pages rank everywhere. If this were the case, you could point the same test at another engine and get a similar number.
But that falls apart when you look at where Brave and Google disagree. 52% of Claude's citations sit in Brave's top 10 and nowhere in Google's, whereas only 2% sit in Google's top 10 and nowhere in Brave's. So when the two engines split on what belongs on page one, Claude goes with Brave.
None of this should be shocking if you've read up on Anthropic and Brave. While Anthropic has never named a text search provider in a launch post or in the API docs, Brave Search is listed under Web Search on Anthropic's published subprocessor list, and it was added the day before Claude's web search shipped.
"AI search" is not one surface. Every assistant has an index underneath it, those indexes disagree, and Claude prefers Brave. If you exclusively run a Google-shaped playbook, you might never get cited by Claude.
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