Shared Claude conversations were briefly indexed by search engines, making some shared chats publicly discoverable, according to user reports.

Users on Reddit said they found thousands of shared conversations with Anthropic's AI chatbot through a simple Google search using the query site:claude.ai/share. The results appeared to come from Claude's "Share with link" feature, which lets users generate a public URL for a conversation.

The shared pages apparently did not include a noindex tag, an instruction used to tell search engines not to include a page in search results. Without that directive, search crawlers may index pages that are accessible on the public web. Link-sharing features are often treated by users as semi-private because they require possession of a URL, but any page reachable on the open web can potentially be crawled, stored, or surfaced by search engines unless technical controls restrict indexing. OpenAI made a similar mistake last year with shared ChatGPT conversations and later removed the feature.

Some of the publicly accessible Claude chats reportedly included sensitive material, including crypto keys and legal queries. Anthropic appears to have acted quickly after the issue was reported, and the Google results disappeared soon afterward.

However, the shared Claude conversations reportedly remained visible for longer on Bing and Brave Search, underscoring that removal from one search index does not necessarily propagate instantly across others. Users can review and manage their shared Claude conversations by going to Settings -> Privacy -> Shared Chats.