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Google says its search ignores llms.txt, and no other AI engine has said it reads one
15% of the apartment community websites we checked publish an llms.txt, and none of the AI answers we have recorded linked one. Google says its search ignores the file, no other AI company has said it reads one, and the largest log study found almost no AI search crawler asking for it.
By HaloScore TeamUpdated November 2026 · 3 min readBallast Commons welcomes dogs and cats, with a limit of two pets per home.
Its website lists the pet fees and a fenced dog run beside building B.
# Ballast Commons> Apartments in Maple Heights, WA## Key pages- [Floor plans](/floor-plans)- [Pet policy](/pets)Key findings
- Few apartment websites have one. 15% of the community websites we checked on October 15, 2026 publish an llms.txt file.
- No AI answer we recorded linked one. 0% of the AI answers we have recorded cited an llms.txt. That shows it is not shown as a source; it cannot show whether a crawler read it.
- Google says its search ignores it. Google's guide for its AI features says an llms.txt will "neither harm nor help" a site in Google Search. OpenAI, Anthropic, Microsoft and Perplexity have not said they read one.
HaloScore data
15% of the apartment websites we checked publish an llms.txt
HaloScore puts the questions renters ask to the major AI engines every month and records every source each answer cites. For this analysis we also requested /llms.txt from the website of every apartment community we measure, on October 15, 2026, the way any automated reader would.
Few apartment websites have one. 15% of the community websites we could read served a real llms.txt file. Another 2% answered that address with an ordinary web page, which an automated check can mistake for the file, and 84% had nothing there.
No AI answer we have recorded linked one. Across every AI answer HaloScore has recorded, 0% cited an llms.txt file. An AI engine shows the pages it took its answer from, and a summary file for machines would rarely be one of them, so this tells us only that the file is not shown as a source. It cannot tell us whether a crawler read it.
Figure 1
Most apartment websites have no llms.txt
What community websites returned when we requested /llms.txt, as a share of the websites we could read.
Source: HaloScore check of measured apartment community websites, October 15, 2026.
| What the website returned | Share of community websites |
|---|---|
| A real llms.txt file | 15% |
| An ordinary web page instead | 2% |
| Nothing | 84% |
Key takeaway
On apartment websites an llms.txt is uncommon, and it has not appeared as a source in any AI answer we have recorded.
The research
Google says its search ignores the file, and log studies find almost nothing reads it
What the file is. An llms.txt was proposed in 2024 by Jeremy Howard of Answer.AI: "We propose adding a /llms.txt markdown file to websites to provide LLM-friendly content." The proposal's own page says the files "are used most heavily for software documentation, where coding agents follow them to find API references and tutorials."[1]
Google: "neither harm nor help." Google's guide to its AI features in Search says that creating an llms.txt for other services "will neither harm nor help your site's visibility or rankings in Google Search, as Google Search ignores them."[2] That covers AI Overviews and AI Mode.
The other AI companies have not said they read one. OpenAI, Anthropic and Perplexity each document their crawlers, and each describes robots.txt as the way a site owner controls them. None of the three pages says the company's crawlers read a website's llms.txt.[3][4][5] Common Crawl puts it plainly: "nothing obliges any crawler to read it."[6]
The largest log study found almost no AI search crawler asking for it. Ahrefs examined the server logs of 137,210 websites and found that "97% of those files received zero traffic in May 2026." AI search crawlers made "just 1.1% of AI bot requests" to those files.[7]
Key takeaway
No AI engine has said it reads a website's llms.txt, Google says its search ignores the file, and the largest log study found almost no AI search crawler requesting one.
The takeaway
Treat an llms.txt as optional, and put the time into what AI engines cite
An llms.txt is cheap to publish and unproven. Three points to plan around:
- 01Nothing shows it helps an apartment community today.Google says it neither harms nor helps in Google Search, and no other AI company has said it reads one.
- 02It does no harm.If your website platform makes one for you, keep it accurate and leave it there.
- 03The time is better spent on the sources AI engines cite.HaloScore clients get the step-by-step for their own community, starting with the sources that shape what renters are told about it.
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Sources
- Jeremy Howard, "The /llms.txt file, v2", llmstxt.org (first published September 3, 2024; version 2, August 2026). llmstxt.org
- Google Search Central, "Google's Guide to Optimizing for Generative AI Features on Google Search" (last updated July 10, 2026; the llms.txt note added June 15, 2026). developers.google.com
- OpenAI, "Overview of OpenAI Crawlers" (read October 15, 2026). developers.openai.com
- Claude Help Center, "Does Anthropic crawl data from the web, and how can site owners block the crawler?" (read October 15, 2026). support.claude.com
- Perplexity, "Perplexity Crawlers" (read October 15, 2026). docs.perplexity.ai
- Malte Ostendorff, Common Crawl, "A Content Analysis of llms.txt Files from the July 2026 Crawl Archive" (August 31, 2026). commoncrawl.org
- Louise Linehan, Ahrefs, "We Analyzed 137K Sites: 97% of llms.txt Files Never Get Read" (June 15, 2026, updated August 27, 2026). Ahrefs sells search and AI visibility tools. ahrefs.com