JAKARTA - Hundreds of conversations shared through the "Share" feature on Claude AI have appeared in Google and Bing search results. This incident sparked concerns about user privacy after various sensitive documents were indexed by the search engine.
The findings were first revealed by a Reddit user who discovered that search operators such as "site:claude.ai/share" can display hundreds of links to Claude AI conversations and Artifacts that were previously shared publicly.
Several indexed pages are said to contain sensitive information, ranging from company documents, patient health records, internal employee reviews, resumes (CVs), API keys (API keys), to various personal prompts that were never expected to appear in search results.
The problem comes from Claude AI's "Share" feature which allows users to create a public link to share a copy of the conversation with others.
Anthropic explained that the company never created a public directory or sitemap containing user conversations. However, when the link is shared on forums, social media, or open websites, search engine crawlers can find it automatically.
Technically, Anthropic has indeed installed a robots.txt file that asks Google and Bing not to crawl pages with the address "claude.ai/share". However, this mechanism does not always prevent pages from appearing in the search engine index.
According to Google and Bing technical documentation, if a page obtains a link from another publicly accessible site, the search engine can still index the URL even if it is blocked through robots.txt.
To prevent this, site developers are advised to add the "noindex" HTML tag or HTTP header that gives direct instructions to search engines not to include pages in the search index.
The 404 Media report said that the conversation page shared through Claude AI at that time had not used the noindex tag. As a result, search engines can still index these pages after finding them on the internet.
Responding to the incident, Google spokesman Ned Adriance said the search engine does not determine whether content is public or not. According to him, the responsibility for preventing pages from appearing in search results lies with the site owner through the implementation of appropriate technical mechanisms, such as the noindex tag.
Similar cases have also occurred with other AI chatbot services. Last year, a number of conversations shared through ChatGPT were indexed by search engines before OpenAI changed its link sharing mechanism. Similar incidents have also been reported with xAI's Grok chatbot.
Shortly after reports about Claude AI surfaced, Google search results that displayed the conversation link began to disappear. This indicates that Anthropic has taken steps to prevent the search engine from continuing to access the page.
Anthropic also urges users to review the conversation links they have shared. Users can open the Settings menu, then Privacy, then Shared Chats to see all public links they have created and revoke public access if it is no longer needed.
Although the problem has been addressed, this incident is a reminder that any publicly shared link can potentially be found by search engines if it is not protected with the right mechanisms.
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