What if you could control whether ChatGPT or Google’s AI models read your website? That’s the promise behind LLMs.txt — a buzzworthy new idea shaking up the SEO and AI content landscape. Designed to give site owners more say in how large language models (LLMs) interact with their content, this proposed standard could become the next big thing in web governance. But is it actually useful? Let’s break down what LLMs.txt really is, what it does, and whether your website needs one.
In a recent discussion, Google’s John Mueller weighed in — and his take might surprise you.
What is LLMs.txt? Is It the New Robots.txt for AI?
First off, let’s clear up some confusion:
- Robots.txt controls how bots crawl your site.
- LLMs.txt is NOT about controlling bots.
- Instead, it’s a proposed markdown-based text file designed to show the main content of your web pages to AI agents — stripped of ads, navigation, and fluff.
In theory, LLMs.txt could help AI better understand your core content without distractions. Sounds great, right? But there’s a catch.
John Mueller’s Take: LLMs.txt Is Like the Obsolete Keywords Meta Tag
In a recent Reddit thread, website owners shared their experience submitting LLMs.txt files but seeing no real impact in crawl logs. One commenter, managing over 20,000 domains, confirmed that no major AI bots are actually fetching these files.
John Mueller responded:
“As far as I know, none of the AI services have said they’re using LLMs.txt… To me, it’s comparable to the keywords meta tag — a claim about what a site is about, but search engines can just check the site themselves.”
In other words, LLMs.txt may be redundant since AI models can already process your original content, structured data, and sitemaps.
Why LLMs.txt Could Cause More Problems Than Benefits
Mueller and other experts raise valid concerns:
- If AI bots don’t check LLMs.txt files, why maintain them?
- Could LLMs.txt be exploited to cloak spammy or misleading content just for AI?
- Could it hurt user experience by feeding AI content that doesn’t link back to your real pages?
These issues echo the problems once posed by the now-defunct keywords meta tag — a tag ignored by modern search engines because it was easy to game.
The Community Weighs In: Focus on What Matters
Simone De Palma, who sparked the original Reddit discussion, shared insights on LinkedIn emphasizing the limited benefits and risks of LLMs.txt files:
“They seem ignored by AI services and may lead to poor user experiences since citations could point to a ‘wall of text’ instead of actual pages.”
Others agree that efforts are better spent optimizing structured data, robots.txt, and sitemaps — the tools that truly impact SEO and AI understanding today.
Should You Use LLMs.txt? Here’s the Bottom Line
For now, LLMs.txt remains just a proposal, not an industry standard, and none of the major AI players officially support it. Instead of investing time and resources into LLMs.txt, focus on:
- High-quality, well-structured content
- Proper use of structured data (Schema.org)
- Optimizing robots.txt and sitemaps
- Improving site speed and user experience
These strategies will help both search engines and AI better understand and rank your content — without the risks and redundancy of LLMs.txt.
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