Knowledge base v2.13.0 · Community edition · data through 2 October 2026
Thing · Standard
A proposed text file that lists a site's content for AI systems; Google Search does not use it.
Glossary · llms.txt
A text file some sites add for AI systems. Google says it isn't necessary: Google Search ignores such AI text files, so they neither help nor harm. On Day 1 Google said llms.txt does not matter for Google Search right now and that it does not expect it to.
Documented in
Chrome's Lighthouse documentation lists an llms.txt audit among its agentic browsing audits: it flags a server error when llms.txt is fetched and marks the audit not applicable when the file is missing, because providing the file is optional for now.
Chrome for Developers · Day 1 · Q&A
Slide and stage claims that name it, the ones Google’s documentation does not cover first.
A community speaker said llms.txt files are not necessary, citing a third-party study from summer 2026 (heard as Ahrefs') that looked at almost 40,000 sites over one month: 97% had no AI agent hits on the file, and those that had any got about two hits a month.
Carlos Ortega · Day 1 · Lightning session A: Automation and AI
Gary Illyes said llms.txt matters to some people, which is why tools such as Lighthouse add checks for it, so both sides of the debate are right in their own context.
Gary Illyes · Day 1 · Q&A
Myth: optimise for AI over readers. Google's answer: optimise for people, with no need to obsess over precise keywords or AI phrasing, no need to chop content, and no need for llms.txt.
Gary Illyes said llms.txt does not matter for Google Search right now and that he does not expect it to, while adding that he had been wrong before.
Gary Illyes · Day 1 · Q&A
An audience member asked whether llms.txt matters, given that Google had said it does not while PageSpeed Insights and Lighthouse advocate it and audit tools ask site owners to create the file.
From the audience · Day 1 · Q&A
A Google panelist said he knew of no plan for Google to use llms.txt, though it could happen, and that a possible future change is no reason to implement it now.
A Google panelist said most llms.txt files he had seen are generated automatically by a setting in SEO plugins, so if Google Search ever made llms.txt matter, a site could add one by ticking a checkbox.
A Google panelist objected that llms.txt is designed for supposedly intelligent systems that should be able to parse a website.
A Google panelist compared llms.txt to the old meta keywords debate: an AI agent should not blindly trust what a site says about its own authority, just as a site calling itself the best car insurance site is no reason to stop looking at others.
An audience question noted that a cats.txt file received more crawler requests than llms.txt in the server logs and asked how important that is.
From the audience · Day 1 · Q&A
cats.txt was created by an SEO as a satirical take on llms.txt, to show that crawlers fetch whatever files they are given, so requests for llms.txt in server logs do not mean the file is important.
Speakers at the event were openly dismissive of llms.txt.
The llms.txt study cited on stage matches Ahrefs' June 2026 study of 137,210 domains: 28% (about 38,000, the 'almost 40,000' sites heard on stage) published an llms.txt file and 97% of those files received no requests at all in May 2026; the files that were fetched got about 22,000 requests across some 1,100 domains, around 20 each, not the 'two hits a month' heard on stage.
Ibrahim Anjro · Day 1 · Lightning session A: Automation and AI
Kit items about llms.txt: their own words name it, or several of the claims they rest on do.
Spend no effort on llms.txt, AI text files or AI-specific markup for Google
Rests on 15 claims, 6 of them naming llms.txt; its own words name llms.txt
Things named in the same claim, with the number of claims they share.