Carcharocles was named by Jordan (1923) [Sepkoski's age data: T Eo-m-l T Plio Sepkoski's reference number: 884,958]. It is not extant.

It was synonymized subjectively with Carcharodon by Gottfried et al. (1996); it was reranked as Otodus (Carcharocles) by Szabo et al. (2017), Ebersole et al. (2019), Boessenecker et al. (2019), Goedert et al. (2024), Ebersole et al. (2024), Cicimurri et al. (2025), Cantalice et al. (2025).

It was assigned to Carcharodontidae by Jordan and Hanibal (1923); to Lamniformes by Sepkoski (2002); to Lamnidae by Jordan (1963), Long (1992), Hastings and Dooley (2017); to Otodontidae by Yabe and Hirayama (1998), Antunes and Balbino (2003), Kocsis (2007), Cicimurri and Knight (2009), Pimiento et al. (2010), Otero et al. (2013), Carrillo-Briceño et al. (2016), Boessenecker (2016), Kent (2018), Landini et al. (2019); and to Otodus by Szabo et al. (2017), Ebersole et al. (2019), Boessenecker et al. (2019), Goedert et al. (2024), Ebersole et al. (2024), Cicimurri et al. (2025), Cantalice et al. (2025).