A brand new evaluation from SE Rating suggests the llms.txt file isn’t delivering measurable advantages but.
After analyzing roughly 300,000 domains, the corporate discovered no relationship between having llms.txt and the way usually a website is cited in main LLM solutions.
What The Knowledge Says
Adoption Is Skinny
SE Rating’s crawl discovered llms.txt on 10.13% of domains. In different phrases, almost 9 out of ten websites they measured haven’t applied it.
That low utilization issues as a result of the format is usually described as an rising baseline for AI visibility. The information as an alternative exhibits scattered experimentation. SE Rating says adoption is pretty even throughout site visitors tiers and never concentrated among the many largest manufacturers.
Excessive-traffic websites had been barely much less possible to make use of the file than mid-tier web sites of their dataset.
No Measurable Hyperlink To LLM Citations
To evaluate whether or not the llms.txt file impacts AI visibility, SE Rating analyzed domain-level quotation frequency throughout responses from outstanding LLMs. They employed statistical correlation exams and an XGBoost mannequin to find out the extent to which every issue contributed to citations.
The primary discovering was that eradicating the llms.txt characteristic really improved the mannequin’s accuracy. SE Rating concludes that llms.txt “doesn’t appear to immediately influence AI quotation frequency. At the least not but.”
Moreover, they discovered no important correlation between citations and the file utilizing easier statistical strategies.
How This Squares With Platform Steering
SE Rating notes that its outcomes align with public platform steering. However it’s essential to be exact about what’s confirmed.
Google hasn’t indicated that llms.txt is used as a sign in AI Overviews or AI Mode. In its AI search steering, Google frames it as an evolution of Search that continues to depend on its current Search methods and indicators, with out mentioning llms.txt as an enter.
OpenAI’s crawler documentation equally focuses on robots.txt controls. OpenAI recommends permitting OAI-SearchBot in robots.txt to assist discovery for its search options, however doesn’t say llms.txt impacts rating or citations.
SE Rating additionally notes that some search engine optimization logs present GPTBot often fetching llms.txt information, although they are saying it doesn’t occur usually and doesn’t seem tied to quotation outcomes.
Taken collectively, the dataset means that even when some fashions retrieve the file, it’s not influencing quotation conduct at scale proper now.
What This Means For You
If you need a clear, low-risk method to put together for attainable future adoption, including llms.txt is straightforward and unlikely to trigger technical hurt.
But when the aim is a near-term visibility bump in AI solutions, the information says you shouldn’t count on one.
That places llms.txt in the identical class as different early AI-visibility ways. Cheap to check if it suits your workflow, however not one thing to promote internally as a confirmed lever.
Featured Picture: Mameraman/Shutterstock
