Day 1: Crawling 17
Shown on screen 1
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.
“LLMS.txt isn't necessary.”
Wording checked against the slide or recording
Speaker Cherry Prommawin, Gary IllyesIn Day 1, 11:45 · How Search works and where's AI?Evidence slide photo, transcript
Used byrequirements DEV-AIF-02, DEV-AIF-03myth M-002story angle A-001glossary term llms.txt
- Repeated by D1-C271 Day 1: A community speaker said llms.txt files are not necessary, citing a third-party study from summer 2026 (heard…
- Extended by D2-C330 Day 2: Gary Illyes said the common SEO advice to chunk content for AI systems is misunderstood: chunking is real…
- Extended by D2-C332 Day 2: Gemini does not need content cut into small chunks of 100 or 200 words, Gary Illyes said, since a smaller…
Said on stage 13
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.
Speaker Carlos OrtegaIn Day 1, 13:10 · Lightning session A: Automation and AIEvidence transcript
Used byrequirement DEV-AIF-02
- Repeats D1-C054 Day 1: Myth: optimise for AI over readers. Google's answer: optimise for people, with no need to obsess over precise…
- Extends D1-C060 Day 1: Speakers at the event were openly dismissive of llms.txt.
- Extended by D1-C505 Day 1: The llms.txt study cited on stage matches Ahrefs' June 2026 study of 137,210 domains: 28% (about 38,000, the…
A community speaker advised against publishing markdown copies of HTML pages for AI agents: the copy is a duplicate (which the speaker also called a possible source of cloaking, an uncertain word in the recordings), and the models are trained to read HTML, CSS and JavaScript.
Speaker Carlos OrtegaIn Day 1, 13:10 · Lightning session A: Automation and AIEvidence transcript
Used byrequirement DEV-AIF-02
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 audienceIn Day 1, 16:35 · Q&AEvidence transcript
- Answered by D1-C454 Day 1: Gary Illyes said llms.txt does not matter for Google Search right now and that he does not expect it to…
- Answered by D1-C455 Day 1: Gary Illyes said llms.txt matters to some people, which is why tools such as Lighthouse add checks for it, so…
- Answered by D1-C456 Day 1: A Google panelist said he knew of no plan for Google to use llms.txt, though it could happen, and that a…
- Answered by D1-C457 Day 1: A Google panelist said most llms.txt files he had seen are generated automatically by a setting in SEO…
- Answered by D1-C458 Day 1: A Google panelist objected that llms.txt is designed for supposedly intelligent systems that should be able…
- Answered by D1-C459 Day 1: A Google panelist compared llms.txt to the old meta keywords debate: an AI agent should not blindly trust…
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.
Speaker Gary IllyesIn Day 1, 16:35 · Q&AEvidence transcript
Used byrequirement DEV-AIF-02glossary term llms.txt
- Answers D1-C453 Day 1: An audience member asked whether llms.txt matters, given that Google had said it does not while PageSpeed…
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.
Speaker Gary IllyesIn Day 1, 16:35 · Q&AEvidence transcript
Used byrequirement DEV-AIF-02
- llms.txt Chrome for Developers · checked 3 October 2026
- Answers D1-C453 Day 1: An audience member asked whether llms.txt matters, given that Google had said it does not while PageSpeed…
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.
“Just because maybe something will change in the future doesn't mean you should take action now.”
Wording checked against the slide or recording
Speaker not identifiedIn Day 1, 16:35 · Q&AEvidence transcript
- Answers D1-C453 Day 1: An audience member asked whether llms.txt matters, given that Google had said it does not while PageSpeed…
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.
Speaker not identifiedIn Day 1, 16:35 · Q&AEvidence transcript
- Answers D1-C453 Day 1: An audience member asked whether llms.txt matters, given that Google had said it does not while PageSpeed…
A Google panelist objected that llms.txt is designed for supposedly intelligent systems that should be able to parse a website.
“it's designed for allegedly intelligent systems”
Wording checked against the slide or recording
Speaker not identifiedIn Day 1, 16:35 · Q&AEvidence transcript
- Answers D1-C453 Day 1: An audience member asked whether llms.txt matters, given that Google had said it does not while PageSpeed…
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.
Speaker not identifiedIn Day 1, 16:35 · Q&AEvidence transcript
- Answers D1-C453 Day 1: An audience member asked whether llms.txt matters, given that Google had said it does not while PageSpeed…
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 audienceIn Day 1, 16:35 · Q&AEvidence transcript
- Answered by D1-C472 Day 1: cats.txt was created by an SEO as a satirical take on llms.txt, to show that crawlers fetch whatever files…
- Answered by D1-C473 Day 1: Files such as cats.txt have no importance for Google Search: if a site links to one, Googlebot will find and…
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.
Speaker not identifiedIn Day 1, 16:35 · Q&AEvidence transcript
Used byglossary term cats.txt
- Answers D1-C471 Day 1: An audience question noted that a cats.txt file received more crawler requests than llms.txt in the server…
Files such as cats.txt have no importance for Google Search: if a site links to one, Googlebot will find and crawl it, but it has no other effect.
Speaker not identifiedIn Day 1, 16:35 · Q&AEvidence transcript
Used byrequirement DEV-AIF-02glossary term cats.txt
- Answers D1-C471 Day 1: An audience question noted that a cats.txt file received more crawler requests than llms.txt in the server…
Speakers at the event were openly dismissive of llms.txt.
In Day 1 · session not recordedEvidence notes, transcript
- Extended by D1-C271 Day 1: A community speaker said llms.txt files are not necessary, citing a third-party study from summer 2026 (heard…
What Google's documentation says 2
Google's guide says new machine-readable files, AI text files or special markup are not needed to appear in Search, and that such files neither harm nor help visibility because Google Search ignores them.
Publisher Google Search CentralAnnotates Day 1, 11:45 · How Search works and where's AI?
Used byrequirement DEV-AIF-02story angle A-001glossary term llms.txt
- Extended by D2-C477 Day 2: As far as the speaker knows, in most of Google's main AI uses a page's schema.org markup is not turned into…
- Extended by D2-C480 Day 2: Google's guide to optimizing for generative AI features lists 'overfocusing on structured data' among the…
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.
Publisher Chrome for DevelopersAnnotates Day 1, 16:35 · Q&A
Used byrequirement DEV-AIF-02
- llms.txt Chrome for Developers · checked 3 October 2026
Analysis by the author 1
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.
Author Ibrahim AnjroAnnotates Day 1, 13:10 · Lightning session A: Automation and AI
Used byrequirement DEV-AIF-02
- Extends D1-C271 Day 1: A community speaker said llms.txt files are not necessary, citing a third-party study from summer 2026 (heard…