Google says llms.txt files won’t harm or help your search rankings

Google updated its AI Search optimization guide to clarify that llms.txt files neither help nor hurt Google search rankings. It also confirmed that Google Search does not use llms.txt files.

What Google wrote. I bolded the portion that is new, where Google wrote that Google Search does not use AI text files, markup or Markdown files.

• “You don’t need to create new machine readable files, AI text files, markup, or Markdown to appear in Google Search (including its generative AI capabilities), as Google Search itself doesn’t use them. Note that Google may discover, crawl, and index many kinds of files in addition to HTML on a website: this doesn’t mean that the file is treated in a special way.”

Google also added a new note that reads:

• “It’s completely fine if you decide to create and maintain LLMS.txt files (or other similar files) for other services or systems that use these files. Doing so won’t harm (nor help) your visibility or rankings in Google Search, as Google Search ignores them.”

Here’s a screenshot of this section:

Dig deeper.

• Meet llms.txt, a proposed standard for AI website content crawling
• llms.txt isn’t robots.txt: It’s a treasure map for AI
• Does llms.txt matter? We tracked 10 sites to find out
• Google adds llms.txt check to Chrome Lighthouse

Why we care. There’s been a lot of confusion about how Google Search handles llms.txt, markdown, and other AI-related files. In short, Google Search may discover, crawl, and index these files, but it does not use them in any special way. Having them on your site won’t help your rankings, and it won’t hurt them either.

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