A new analysis from SE Ranking suggests the llms.txt file isn’t delivering measurable benefits yet.
After examining roughly 300,000 domains, the company found no relationship between having llms.txt and how often a domain is cited in major LLM answers.
What The Data Says
Adoption Is Thin
SE Ranking’s crawl found llms.txt on 10.13% of domains. In other words, nearly nine out of ten sites they measured haven’t implemented it.
That low usage matters because the format is sometimes described as an emerging baseline for AI visibility. The data instead shows scattered experimentation. SE Ranking says adoption is fairly even across traffic tiers and not concentrated among the biggest brands.
High-traffic sites were slightly less likely to use the file than mid-tier websites in their dataset.
No Measurable Link To LLM Citations
To assess whether the llms.txt file affects AI visibility, SE Ranking analyzed domain-level citation frequency across responses from prominent LLMs. They employed statistical correlation tests and an XGBoost model to determine the extent to which each factor contributed to citations.
The main finding was that removing the llms.txt feature actually improved the model’s accuracy. SE Ranking concludes that llms.txt “doesn’t seem to directly impact AI citation frequency. At least not yet.”
Additionally, they found no significant correlation between citations and the file using simpler statistical methods.
How This Squares With Platform Guidance
SE Ranking notes that its results align with public platform guidance. But it’s important to be precise about what is confirmed.
Google hasn’t indicated that llms.txt is used as a signal in AI Overviews or AI Mode. In its AI search guidance, Google frames it as an evolution of Search that continues to rely on its existing Search systems and signals, without mentioning llms.txt as an input.
OpenAI’s crawler documentation similarly focuses on robots.txt controls. OpenAI recommends allowing OAI-SearchBot in robots.txt to support discovery for its search features, but does not say llms.txt affects ranking or citations.
SE Ranking also notes that some SEO logs show GPTBot occasionally fetching llms.txt files, though they say it doesn’t happen often and does not appear tied to citation outcomes.
Taken together, the dataset suggests that even if some models retrieve the file, it’s not influencing citation behavior at scale right now.
What This Means For You
If you want a clean, low-risk way to prepare for possible future adoption, adding llms.txt is easy and unlikely to cause technical harm.
But if the goal is a near-term visibility bump in AI answers, the data says you shouldn’t expect one.
That puts llms.txt in the same category as other early AI-visibility tactics. Reasonable to test if it fits your workflow, but not something to sell internally as a proven lever.
Featured Image: Mameraman/Shutterstock
