Does llms.txt actually work?
Not for rankings or citations, on the evidence as of 15 October 2026. Google says Google Search doesn’t use llms.txt. Ahrefs found 97% of the files it studied got no requests in May 2026, and Semrush and SE Ranking found no link to AI visibility. Its readers are mostly coding agents that follow a link to it. Write one if it takes ten minutes and matches your pages, but don’t expect traffic from it.
The short answer (checked 15 October 2026)
llms.txt doesn’t move rankings in Google, and no study we could read found it moves citations in AI answers. It does get read by some coding agents and tools when something points them to it. That makes it a cheap routing file, not a visibility strategy. This page corrects the common claims with dated sources; the format itself is on What is llms.txt?.
Claims and what the evidence says
| Claim you’ll see | What the sources say |
|---|---|
| “llms.txt is a new web standard” | It’s a proposal by Jeremy Howard on llmstxt.org, first published 3 September 2024 and now in its second version. No standards body has adopted it. |
| “Google uses it for AI Overviews” | Google says Google Search doesn’t use llms.txt or other AI text files. |
| “It gets you cited by ChatGPT” | No study we found shows that. Three studies found no effect or almost no reads. |
| “Nobody reads it” | Too strong. Coding agents and some crawlers fetch it, a little. |
| “It can hurt you” | Not in Google Search. A file that contradicts your pages can mislead an agent. |
What Google says
Google’s AI optimization guide says you don’t need to create AI text files or Markdown to appear in Google Search, because Google Search doesn’t use them (Google AI optimization guide, last updated 10 July 2026, read 15 Oct 2026). Google’s changelog of 15 June 2026 adds that these files won’t affect visibility or rankings either way, and that keeping them for other services is fine (Search Central updates). That covers Google Search, including AI Overviews and AI Mode. It says nothing about other companies’ assistants.
What the studies found
| Study | Sample | Finding |
|---|---|---|
| Ahrefs, 15 June 2026 | 137,210 domains with traffic in May 2026 | 28% published llms.txt; 97% of those files got zero requests in May. Of the requests that did arrive, 96% came from bots, and named AI bots made 19.5%. |
| Semrush, 28 Sep 2026 | Its own test site, plus adoption counts | Added the file to Search Engine Land in March 2025 and “didn’t find a correlation” with AI results; GPTBot, ClaudeBot and PerplexityBot didn’t visit it from mid-August to late October 2025. |
| SE Ranking, 7 Nov 2025 | Nearly 300,000 domains | 10.13% had the file; correlation tests and a model found no effect on how often a domain is cited. |
All three are SEO vendors studying their own data, and their adoption figures disagree (28% of Ahrefs’ customer domains, 10% of SE Ranking’s sample, 16,670 domains counted by Semrush), because they measure different samples. On the question that matters, they agree: no measurable benefit for AI visibility yet.
Who does read it
In Ahrefs’ logs, GPTBot (training) made the most AI requests, 4.51%, and Claude Code came second, ahead of every AI search bot. OAI-SearchBot made 0.74%. Ahrefs’ reading: agents fetch the file when a link or instruction points them there, not on their own. That matches what llms.txt is good at: a coding agent asked to “read the docs for this tool” can get one clean index instead of crawling a JavaScript site.
What katman.pro does, and why
We ship one anyway, as a routing file:
- It’s generated from the same data file as our pages (prices, the one-sentence description, the page list), so it can’t drift from what the pages say.
- On 15 October 2026 it was 15.7 KB with one line for each of 52 pages, and our robots.txt points to it in a comment.
- Every page also has a Markdown copy: add
?format=mdto the URL or sendAccept: text/markdown.
We don’t expect rankings or citations from it, and we don’t count it as a fix. Our sample site got ChatGPT visitors through pages OAI-SearchBot could read, and we can’t tell whether llms.txt played any part (own measurement, September 2026).
Example: a routing file that fits on one screen
# Acme invoice sync
> Upload an invoice and Acme moves its line items into your accounting software.
## Product
- [Pricing](https://acme.example/pricing): plans and prices, as on the page
- [Docs](https://acme.example/docs): setup in Cursor and Claude Code
## Optional
- [Full text](https://acme.example/llms-full.txt)
What Katman does here
Katman is an MCP server that runs inside your AI coding tool. katman_generate builds llms.txt from your research file and writes it only when you pass write: true; katman_lint_content flags a sentence or price that differs between the file and your pages. The llms.txt generator drafts a starting file from your sitemap. Katman Pro is $99 a month for up to 3 sites, with fix prompts and page briefs uncapped. Or have us do it: Growth writes 30 pages a month for you. Neither the tool nor the file can make an assistant recommend you; spend your time first on bot access and text in the HTML (six traps).
Written by the Katman team, Rnify Limited. Google, llmstxt.org, Ahrefs, Semrush and SE Ranking pages checked 15 October 2026. We’ll update this page when a study shows otherwise.
Who this is not for
- Readers who want the file format: it’s on What is llms.txt, with a skeleton you can copy.
- Sites whose pages are empty without JavaScript: llms.txt can’t make up for that, so fix rendering first.
- Anyone selling llms.txt as a growth service: the evidence on this page doesn’t support it.
Frequently asked questions
Is llms.txt a standard?
No. It’s a proposal published on llmstxt.org on 3 September 2024 and last revised on 10 August 2026, with no standards body behind it. We found no search engine or assistant saying it uses the file for ranking or citations.
Did Google say llms.txt is useless?
Google said Google Search doesn’t use it, so it won’t help or hurt your visibility there (changelog, 15 June 2026). It also said it’s fine to keep the file for other services that use it.
Do ChatGPT or Perplexity read llms.txt?
Rarely, in the data we could find. In Ahrefs’ May 2026 logs, OAI-SearchBot made 0.74% of llms.txt requests, and Perplexity’s crawler fewer than Slackbot.
Who does read llms.txt, then?
Mostly agents that are pointed at it: in Ahrefs’ data, Claude Code was the second-largest AI requester after GPTBot. Coding agents read documentation that way when a link or an instruction sends them there.
Can llms.txt hurt my site?
Not in Google Search. It can mislead an agent if it contradicts your pages, and Ahrefs advises managing it like code, because an agent may follow what it says.
Why does katman.pro have an llms.txt if it doesn’t work?
As a routing file for agents: it lists every page with one line and points to Markdown copies. It’s built from the same data as the pages, so it costs us nothing to keep accurate.