How Claude Uses Brave Search for Local Results

When you ask Claude about a nearby restaurant, dentist, or gym, it doesn’t pull from a secret internal directory of businesses. Instead, Claude web search sends your query to Brave Search in real time and works with the results it gets back.

Brave Search returns a ranked list of web pages it believes are most relevant for your location-based query. These can include:

• Official business websites
• Local directories and listings
• Review platforms
• Maps and aggregator sites
• Local news or blog coverage

Claude then reads the content of those pages, extracts key facts (like name, address, hours, and services), and synthesizes an answer. The goal is to give you a concise, helpful summary while still pointing you back to the original sources.

Because Brave Search is independent and privacy-focused, Claude benefits from a search index that isn’t tied to the major ad platforms. That means the local results are driven by Brave’s ranking systems, not by Claude itself.

How Sources Are Selected and Cited

Once Brave Search returns results, Claude has to decide which pages to rely on and which to cite. It does this in a few steps:

1. Relevance to the exact question

Claude checks whether a page actually answers what you asked: for example, whether it clearly lists current hours, menu items, or booking information.

1. Authoritativeness and specificity

Official business sites, well-known local directories, and established review platforms are often prioritized because they tend to be more accurate and structured.

1. Consistency across multiple sources

If several independent sources agree on the same phone number or address, Claude is more likely to trust and surface that information.

1. Freshness and recency signals

Pages that show recent updates, current menus, or up-to-date posts are favored over obviously outdated content.

When Claude answers, it typically cites a small set of representative sources from the Brave Search results. These citations are meant to:

• Show where key facts came from
• Help you verify details directly
• Give visibility to the businesses and platforms that provided the information

How Local Businesses Can Increase Their Chances of Being Cited

Because Claude’s view of the local web comes through Brave Search, the best way to be surfaced and cited is to make your business easy for Brave to understand and rank.

Some practical steps:

• Maintain a clear, crawlable website with your name, address, phone number, and core services in plain text.
• Keep hours, pricing, and menus current so that recency signals are strong.
• Be consistent across listings (same NAP data on your site, directories, and review platforms).
• Earn coverage and reviews on reputable local sites that Brave is likely to index and rank.

Claude doesn’t manually curate or sell placement for local businesses. Instead, it reflects what Brave Search can find and rank at query time. If your information is accurate, consistent, and easy to discover, you’re more likely to appear in Brave’s results—and therefore more likely to be cited when Claude answers local business questions.

User query → Claude web search → Brave Search results → Claude reads pages → Synthesized answer + citations

How Claude Finds and Cites Local Businesses

When people ask Claude about local businesses—like “best coffee shops near me” or “Is [Your Business] open on Sundays?”—the model doesn’t rely on a static, hidden database. Instead, it actively pulls in fresh information through Brave Search, then decides which pages to cite based on authority, relevance, and how clearly the information is structured.

This means your local business website, listings, and profiles can absolutely be cited by Claude—but only if they meet the criteria its retrieval and ranking pipeline is looking for.

Below, we’ll break down how Claude finds local business information, what makes a page citeable, how it compares to ChatGPT and Perplexity, and what you can do to improve your visibility across AI assistants. For a broader comparison of how other models work, you can also read:

• How ChatGPT Finds Local Businesses
• How Perplexity Chooses Sources
• AI Visibility for Local Businesses

How Does Claude Find Local Business Information?

Claude’s local answers are powered by a retrieval pipeline built on top of Brave Search. Instead of browsing the entire web from scratch for every query, it leans on Brave’s index and ranking, then applies its own reasoning to interpret and cite the best sources.

Here’s the high-level flow when someone asks Claude a local question:

1. User asks a local query

Example: “What are the best pizza places near Capitol Hill in Seattle?” or “Does Oak & Pine Dental in Austin accept new patients?”

1. Claude decides whether to search

For local, time-sensitive, or business-specific questions, Claude almost always triggers a live search. It knows that static training data is likely outdated for hours, menus, and availability.

1. Claude calls Brave Search

Claude sends a search request to Brave with a reformulated version of the user’s query. This can include:

• The business name
• The city or neighborhood
• Category terms like “coffee shop,” “dentist,” or “plumber”

1. Brave returns ranked results

Brave provides a ranked list of URLs and snippets. These typically include:

• Official business websites
• Major local directories (Google Business Profile pages that are mirrored on the open web, Yelp, TripAdvisor, OpenTable, etc.)
• Local media, blogs, and review roundups
• Map or listing aggregators

1. Claude selects and reads candidate pages

Claude then fetches the content of the top results (subject to token limits and safety filters). It scans for:

• Business name, address, and phone (NAP)
• Hours, services, pricing, and menus
• Reviews and ratings
• Location context (neighborhoods, landmarks, service areas)

1. Claude synthesizes an answer and chooses citations

From there, Claude writes a natural-language answer and attaches citations to specific claims. It tends to:

• Cite the official business site for core facts (hours, contact, services)
• Cite directories or review sites for ratings and popularity
• Cite local guides or blogs for “best of” or curated lists

Because Brave Search is the backbone, anything that improves your visibility and clarity in Brave’s index will directly influence how often Claude finds and cites you.

What Makes a Local Business Page Citeable by Claude?

Not every page that appears in search results is equally likely to be cited. Claude is looking for pages that are both easy for a search engine to rank and easy for an AI model to parse and trust.

Key traits that make a page highly citeable:

1. Clear, consistent business identity

Claude needs to be confident that a page actually represents the business being asked about.

• Exact business name in the page title and H1
• Full address (street, city, state, ZIP) in a consistent format
• Primary phone number and contact methods
• Matching NAP data across your site and major listings

If your homepage, contact page, and footer all present the same details, Claude can more easily confirm that “Oak & Pine Dental” in Austin is the same entity across multiple sources.

2. Structured data and machine-readable signals

Claude benefits from the same structured signals that help traditional search engines:

• Schema.org LocalBusiness markup (or more specific types like Dentist, Restaurant, AutoRepair, etc.)
• Marked-up opening hours, geo-coordinates, service areas, and menu URLs
• Clear HTML structure: headings, lists, and tables instead of images of text

When your site uses structured data, Brave can index it more accurately, and Claude can more reliably extract facts like hours, categories, and services.

3. Up-to-date, explicit operational details

Claude is cautious about giving outdated or ambiguous information. Pages that clearly state current details are more likely to be cited:

• “Updated January 2026” or similar recency signals
• Explicit hours of operation, including holiday notes
• Clear service descriptions (“emergency plumbing,” “same-day crowns,” “vegan options”)

If your hours or offerings are buried in PDFs, images, or social posts, Claude may struggle to confirm them and instead lean on third-party listings.

4. Authority and corroboration

Claude prefers to cite pages that are:

• Prominent in Brave’s rankings for your brand and category
• Consistent with other sources (same address, hours, phone)
• Linked from reputable sites, such as local chambers, news outlets, or major directories

If your official site conflicts with multiple high-authority listings, Claude may hedge or favor the consensus view.

5. Local and topical relevance

For “best of” or discovery-style queries, Claude looks for pages that:

• Cover multiple businesses in a category (e.g., “Best coffee shops in Capitol Hill”)
• Provide comparative context (pros, cons, price ranges)
• Are clearly tied to a specific geography

This is why local blogs, city guides, and curated lists often get cited alongside individual business sites.

How Is Claude Different from ChatGPT and Perplexity?

Claude, ChatGPT, and Perplexity all answer local questions, but they differ in how they search, what they cite, and how they present sources.

1. Search backbone and indexing

• Claude uses Brave Search as its primary web index. Your visibility in Brave strongly influences whether Claude sees and cites you.
• ChatGPT (with browsing enabled) leans on Bing and custom retrieval layers. To understand how that affects local businesses, see How ChatGPT Finds Local Businesses.
• Perplexity uses a mix of Bing, its own crawling, and custom ranking. It is particularly aggressive about surfacing and summarizing multiple sources; details are in How Perplexity Chooses Sources.

Because each model sits on a different search stack, a business that’s highly visible in one system may be less visible in another.

2. Citation style and depth

• Claude typically cites a focused set of authoritative pages—often your official site plus 2–4 major directories or guides.
• ChatGPT may cite fewer sources in some interfaces, and sometimes relies more heavily on its internal training data unless explicitly prompted to browse.
• Perplexity is designed as a source-first experience, often listing many citations and encouraging users to click through.

For local businesses, this means Claude is more likely to highlight a small number of high-quality, well-structured pages rather than a long tail of weaker mentions.

3. Handling of ambiguity and conflicts

• Claude tends to be conservative when sources disagree, often noting uncertainty or suggesting users check the official site.
• ChatGPT may synthesize a single answer from conflicting data, sometimes without clearly signaling the disagreement.
• Perplexity often exposes the conflict by showing multiple sources side by side.

If your hours, address, or name differ across platforms, Claude’s cautious behavior can either help (by steering users to your official site) or hurt (by avoiding firm statements if it can’t reconcile the data).

4. Cross-platform AI visibility

Because each AI assistant uses different search infrastructure and ranking logic, AI visibility is now multi-dimensional. A business can:

• Rank well in Google but poorly in Brave
• Be cited frequently by Perplexity but rarely by Claude
• Appear in ChatGPT answers only when users explicitly ask about it by name

That’s why tools like SurfaceLocal focus on cross-AI visibility, not just traditional SEO. For a deeper overview of this landscape, see AI Visibility for Local Businesses.

How Can Local Businesses Improve Their Claude Visibility?

Improving your chances of being found and cited by Claude is partly about classic local SEO and partly about making your information AI-readable.

Here’s a practical checklist focused specifically on Claude and Brave Search.

1. Strengthen your presence in Brave Search

Because Claude relies on Brave, you want to ensure Brave can easily find, crawl, and rank your site:

• Make sure your site is publicly accessible (no IP blocks or aggressive bot filters that might block Brave’s crawler).
• Use descriptive title tags like “Oak & Pine Dental – Family Dentist in Austin, TX.”
• Include your city and neighborhood in key on-page elements (H1, intro paragraph, footer).
• Earn links and mentions from local sites that Brave is likely to trust: news outlets, chambers of commerce, local blogs, and event sponsors.

2. Clean up and standardize your NAP data

Claude cross-checks multiple sources. Inconsistencies reduce confidence and can lead to hedged or vague answers.

• Standardize your business name, address, and phone across:
• Your website
• Google Business Profile
• Yelp, TripAdvisor, OpenTable, and industry-specific directories
• Social profiles (Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, etc.)
• Fix old or duplicate listings that show outdated addresses or phone numbers.

When Claude sees the same NAP data repeated across authoritative sources, it’s more likely to treat that information as reliable.

3. Add and maintain structured data

Implement Schema.org markup tailored to your business type:

• Use LocalBusiness or a subtype (Restaurant, Dentist, Hotel, AutoRepair, etc.).
• Include fields for:
• name, address, telephone
• openingHoursSpecification
• geo (latitude/longitude)
• url and sameAs (links to major profiles)
• Keep this markup updated whenever your hours, phone, or services change.

Structured data helps Brave and Claude quickly extract the facts they need without misreading your layout.

4. Make key information explicit and text-based

Claude is good at reading natural language, but it still needs clear, explicit statements:

• Put your hours in plain HTML text, not just in images or PDFs.
• Create a dedicated “Contact” or “Visit Us” page with your address, phone, parking info, and map.
• For restaurants, publish a text-based menu (or at least a clearly structured menu page) instead of only a PDF.
• For service businesses, list services and service areas in bullet points or short sections.

The easier it is for a human to skim and understand your page, the easier it is for Claude to extract and cite the right details.

5. Encourage authoritative third-party coverage

Claude doesn’t just rely on your own site. It looks for corroboration and context.

• Get listed (accurately) on major directories relevant to your category.
• Encourage customers to leave reviews on platforms that are well-indexed by Brave.
• Pitch or collaborate with local blogs and media for “best of” lists, neighborhood guides, or feature stories.

These third-party pages often become the sources Claude cites when users ask comparative or discovery-style questions.

6. Monitor and iterate on AI visibility

AI visibility isn’t static. Models, search indexes, and ranking signals change over time.

• Periodically ask Claude:
• “What can you tell me about [Your Business Name] in [City]?”
• “What are the best [category] options near [neighborhood]?”
• Note which sites it cites and whether it:
• Shows your current hours and services
• Uses your preferred branding and description
• Places you correctly on the map and in the right neighborhood

Tools like SurfaceLocal automate this process across Claude, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI, and others, so you can see where you’re strong, where you’re invisible, and which pages are actually driving AI citations.

By combining solid local SEO fundamentals with AI-focused structure and consistency, you can significantly increase the odds that Claude finds, trusts, and cites your business whenever nearby customers ask for help.