{
  "measured_by": "GetIntel",
  "measured_on": "2026-08-11",
  "question": "Does publishing llms.txt make a domain more likely to be cited by AI engines?",
  "method": "We took the 50 most-cited domains across our probe corpus, requested https://<domain>/llms.txt for each on 11 August 2026, and counted a domain as publishing one only on an HTTP 200 with a text/plain or text/markdown content type. We then compared citation counts and citation rank between the two groups.",
  "corpus": {
    "distinct_domains_cited": 4211,
    "total_citations": 47093,
    "domains_checked": 50
  },
  "adoption": {
    "publish_llms_txt": 29,
    "do_not": 21
  },
  "citations": {
    "with_llms_txt": {
      "n": 29,
      "mean": 338.8,
      "median": 286
    },
    "without": {
      "n": 21,
      "mean": 464.0,
      "median": 318
    }
  },
  "rank": {
    "mean_rank_with_llms_txt": 25.8,
    "mean_rank_without": 25.0,
    "note": "1 = most cited of the 50. Rank is the outlier-resistant comparison; the raw means are distorted by YouTube and Reddit."
  },
  "finding": "No relationship. Mean citation rank is 25.8 for domains publishing llms.txt and 25.0 for those that do not, across a 50-domain field. The raw mean citation count is HIGHER for non-adopters, but that is driven by two outliers.",
  "the_two_biggest": [
    {
      "domain": "youtube.com",
      "citations": 1876,
      "llms_txt": false
    },
    {
      "domain": "reddit.com",
      "citations": 1701,
      "llms_txt": false
    }
  ],
  "confound": "Adoption skews toward category vendors, who would be cited on category questions regardless. By our classification 14 of the 29 adopters are category vendors. This is correlational, n=50, single category, single day. It cannot establish that llms.txt does nothing; it establishes that we cannot see an effect.",
  "rows": [
    {
      "domain": "youtube.com",
      "citations": 1876,
      "llms_txt": false,
      "ai_visibility_vendor_our_classification": false
    },
    {
      "domain": "reddit.com",
      "citations": 1701,
      "llms_txt": false,
      "ai_visibility_vendor_our_classification": false
    },
    {
      "domain": "arxiv.org",
      "citations": 740,
      "llms_txt": false,
      "ai_visibility_vendor_our_classification": false
    },
    {
      "domain": "dageno.ai",
      "citations": 695,
      "llms_txt": true,
      "ai_visibility_vendor_our_classification": true
    },
    {
      "domain": "linkedin.com",
      "citations": 676,
      "llms_txt": false,
      "ai_visibility_vendor_our_classification": false
    },
    {
      "domain": "semrush.com",
      "citations": 659,
      "llms_txt": true,
      "ai_visibility_vendor_our_classification": true
    },
    {
      "domain": "llmpulse.ai",
      "citations": 580,
      "llms_txt": true,
      "ai_visibility_vendor_our_classification": true
    },
    {
      "domain": "trysight.ai",
      "citations": 543,
      "llms_txt": true,
      "ai_visibility_vendor_our_classification": true
    },
    {
      "domain": "therankmasters.com",
      "citations": 526,
      "llms_txt": true,
      "ai_visibility_vendor_our_classification": true
    },
    {
      "domain": "otterly.ai",
      "citations": 521,
      "llms_txt": true,
      "ai_visibility_vendor_our_classification": true
    },
    {
      "domain": "kime.ai",
      "citations": 507,
      "llms_txt": true,
      "ai_visibility_vendor_our_classification": true
    },
    {
      "domain": "tryprofound.com",
      "citations": 499,
      "llms_txt": false,
      "ai_visibility_vendor_our_classification": true
    },
    {
      "domain": "zapier.com",
      "citations": 482,
      "llms_txt": true,
      "ai_visibility_vendor_our_classification": false
    },
    {
      "domain": "github.com",
      "citations": 448,
      "llms_txt": true,
      "ai_visibility_vendor_our_classification": false
    },
    {
      "domain": "ahrefs.com",
      "citations": 442,
      "llms_txt": false,
      "ai_visibility_vendor_our_classification": true
    },
    {
      "domain": "techradar.com",
      "citations": 440,
      "llms_txt": false,
      "ai_visibility_vendor_our_classification": false
    },
    {
      "domain": "frase.io",
      "citations": 402,
      "llms_txt": true,
      "ai_visibility_vendor_our_classification": true
    },
    {
      "domain": "seranking.com",
      "citations": 393,
      "llms_txt": false,
      "ai_visibility_vendor_our_classification": true
    },
    {
      "domain": "aiclicks.io",
      "citations": 381,
      "llms_txt": true,
      "ai_visibility_vendor_our_classification": true
    },
    {
      "domain": "blog.hubspot.com",
      "citations": 367,
      "llms_txt": true,
      "ai_visibility_vendor_our_classification": false
    },
    {
      "domain": "llmrefs.com",
      "citations": 360,
      "llms_txt": true,
      "ai_visibility_vendor_our_classification": true
    },
    {
      "domain": "searchengineland.com",
      "citations": 358,
      "llms_txt": true,
      "ai_visibility_vendor_our_classification": false
    },
    {
      "domain": "useomnia.com",
      "citations": 355,
      "llms_txt": false,
      "ai_visibility_vendor_our_classification": true
    },
    {
      "domain": "help.openai.com",
      "citations": 347,
      "llms_txt": false,
      "ai_visibility_vendor_our_classification": false
    },
    {
      "domain": "developers.google.com",
      "citations": 318,
      "llms_txt": false,
      "ai_visibility_vendor_our_classification": false
    },
    {
      "domain": "siftly.ai",
      "citations": 286,
      "llms_txt": true,
      "ai_visibility_vendor_our_classification": true
    },
    {
      "domain": "getintel.ai",
      "citations": 276,
      "llms_txt": true,
      "ai_visibility_vendor_our_classification": true
    },
    {
      "domain": "ziptie.dev",
      "citations": 270,
      "llms_txt": false,
      "ai_visibility_vendor_our_classification": false
    },
    {
      "domain": "medium.com",
      "citations": 259,
      "llms_txt": false,
      "ai_visibility_vendor_our_classification": false
    },
    {
      "domain": "trustmary.com",
      "citations": 255,
      "llms_txt": true,
      "ai_visibility_vendor_our_classification": false
    },
    {
      "domain": "instagram.com",
      "citations": 211,
      "llms_txt": false,
      "ai_visibility_vendor_our_classification": false
    },
    {
      "domain": "wordpress.org",
      "citations": 208,
      "llms_txt": true,
      "ai_visibility_vendor_our_classification": false
    },
    {
      "domain": "geoptie.com",
      "citations": 203,
      "llms_txt": false,
      "ai_visibility_vendor_our_classification": false
    },
    {
      "domain": "rankability.com",
      "citations": 203,
      "llms_txt": true,
      "ai_visibility_vendor_our_classification": true
    },
    {
      "domain": "foglift.io",
      "citations": 203,
      "llms_txt": true,
      "ai_visibility_vendor_our_classification": true
    },
    {
      "domain": "openai.com",
      "citations": 202,
      "llms_txt": false,
      "ai_visibility_vendor_our_classification": false
    },
    {
      "domain": "code.claude.com",
      "citations": 196,
      "llms_txt": true,
      "ai_visibility_vendor_our_classification": false
    },
    {
      "domain": "keyword.com",
      "citations": 193,
      "llms_txt": true,
      "ai_visibility_vendor_our_classification": false
    },
    {
      "domain": "perplexity.ai",
      "citations": 185,
      "llms_txt": false,
      "ai_visibility_vendor_our_classification": false
    },
    {
      "domain": "alhena.ai",
      "citations": 181,
      "llms_txt": true,
      "ai_visibility_vendor_our_classification": false
    },
    {
      "domain": "xseek.io",
      "citations": 179,
      "llms_txt": true,
      "ai_visibility_vendor_our_classification": false
    },
    {
      "domain": "peec.ai",
      "citations": 179,
      "llms_txt": false,
      "ai_visibility_vendor_our_classification": false
    },
    {
      "domain": "usegrowthos.com",
      "citations": 175,
      "llms_txt": true,
      "ai_visibility_vendor_our_classification": false
    },
    {
      "domain": "discoveredlabs.com",
      "citations": 173,
      "llms_txt": true,
      "ai_visibility_vendor_our_classification": false
    },
    {
      "domain": "airops.com",
      "citations": 173,
      "llms_txt": false,
      "ai_visibility_vendor_our_classification": false
    },
    {
      "domain": "yotpo.com",
      "citations": 168,
      "llms_txt": true,
      "ai_visibility_vendor_our_classification": false
    },
    {
      "domain": "cursor.com",
      "citations": 161,
      "llms_txt": true,
      "ai_visibility_vendor_our_classification": false
    },
    {
      "domain": "maxaeo.ai",
      "citations": 140,
      "llms_txt": true,
      "ai_visibility_vendor_our_classification": false
    },
    {
      "domain": "promptrush.ai",
      "citations": 137,
      "llms_txt": false,
      "ai_visibility_vendor_our_classification": false
    },
    {
      "domain": "topify.ai",
      "citations": 137,
      "llms_txt": false,
      "ai_visibility_vendor_our_classification": false
    }
  ],
  "vendor_classification_note": "The ai_visibility_vendor_our_classification flag is OUR editorial judgement, not a measured property. Borderline calls include semrush.com and ahrefs.com, which are general SEO suites that also ship AI-visibility features, and blog.hubspot.com and zapier.com, which we did NOT count. A reasonable person could land between roughly 12 and 16. It is published as a column so you can disagree with it specifically rather than in the abstract."
}