one year on
Claude can now search the web, Anthropic says
Anthropic rolls out web search in feature preview for paid Claude users in the United States, allowing the assistant to retrieve up-to-date information with citations.
Anthropic announced today that Claude can now search the web, a feature rolling out in preview to all paid Claude users in the United States. The company says the capability, which works with Claude 3.7 Sonnet, allows the assistant to access “the latest events and information” and provide direct citations in its responses.
Anthropic suggests applications include sales teams analyzing industry trends, financial analysts assessing market data, and shoppers comparing product reviews—all conversational, all cited. The feature is toggled on in profile settings. Support for free-tier users and additional countries is promised soon.
On Hacker News, the announcement drew 1,233 points and 726 comments. Many participants questioned the quality of retrieval, with one commenter noting that implementations often “look at the top X hits and then interpret it to be the correct answer,” a pattern that could amplify blogspam and stale forum threads. Another reply quipped that this made LLMs “truly reaching human-like behavior.”
The record
Criticized the feature for relying on top search results which are often spam or unresolved forum posts.
Shared a comic linking the behavior to human-like information consumption.
One year later — open only if you can handle spoilers
The feature later expanded to all free users in May 2025. Critics' concerns about retrieval quality persisted in subsequent versions.
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