It’s one thing for ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini to train their models on the data we give them, or for AI chatbots to store memories of our conversations for future reference. But having our AI chats appear publicly on Google Search? That’s not something any of us bargained for.
Yet that’s exactly what happened to some unfortunate Claude users, who learned their Claude conversations were popping up in Google’s search results for those using the proper search phrase.
Those exposed Claude chats have since disappeared from Google Search. Still, it’s unnerving that Claude exchanges showed up on Google in the first place—and, in fact, it’s not the first time it’s happened.
The “good” news about this Claude incident is that it involved only shared Claude chats. That is, Claude conversations that you’ve specifically made available to others via a public link. The same goes for shared artifacts (i.e., Claude-created documents, code snippets, or other content that appears in a pane next to the chat).
To share a Claude chat or artifact, you need to click the curved forward arrow in the top-right corner of the Claude Desktop interface. A pop-up window will give you two options: “Keep private” or “Create public link,” with the latter option producing a URL that allows anyone who clicks it to view the conversation in full.
Ben Patterson/Foundry
Creating a public link for a Claude chat doesn’t automatically make it pop up on Google, but it does appear to be the first step toward that type of exposure actually happening.
In a statement to TechCrunch, an Anthropic spokesperson said it doesn’t “share chat directories or sitemaps with search engines like Google,” adding that the shared links can’t be found “unless people choose to share them themselves,” such as in a social post, at which point they “may be archived by third-party services.”
One way or another, thousands of shared Claude posts did wind up in Google’s search results, exposing all kinds of sensitive Claude discussions, including chats about crypto wallets with the keys in plain view, a lawyer asking whether he should self-report an ethics violation, and a fair amount of eyebrow-raising erotica. Those Claude chats have since disappeared from Google, suggesting Anthropic took steps to block Google bots from crawling shared Claude links.
In any event, the best way to keep your Claude chats private—and your ChatGPT or Gemini conversations, for that matter—is to exercise caution when sharing them. A good rule of thumb, which also applies to anything you write in an email or a social post, is to ask yourself whether you’d be comfortable putting the content you’re sharing on the back of a postcard. If not, don’t share it. (Or share using a method that’s more secure than a public URL.)
Ben Patterson/Foundry
To check whether you’ve previously shared any Claude conversations or artifacts, navigate to Claude’s Settings menu, select Privacy, then click on “Shared chats” or “Shared artifacts.” From there, you can see which conversations/artifacts you’ve shared and also make them private again.
