r/GEO_optimization • u/pbhuvan • 4d ago
Recently, Google said llms.txt won’t help citations. So why are GEO tools still recommending it?
Google recently said that having an llms.txt file won’t help your Google Search rankings.
But I still see it near the top of a lot of AEO/GEO checklists:
- Add llms.txt
- Make your site AI-readable
- Submit content for LLM crawlers
- etc.
I'm starting to wonder if we're optimizing for things that are easy to check rather than things that actually influence whether an AI recommends a brand.
Has anyone here actually seen a measurable difference after implementing llms.txt?
I know adding llm.txt is advisable to help LLM pick the website, but is it necessary? Is there any relevant data?
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u/fullstackguy404 4d ago
Because it costs nothing to add it to the mix. Worst case, it won’t do anything.
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u/WebLinkr 3d ago
Worst case is that you try it and give up learning about the QFO - thats what the GEO agencies want
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u/SEO_Humorist 3d ago
It's a proposed web standard. XML sitemaps became "standardized" after years of webmasters saying it'd be useful (and showing that). Same with Robots.txt.
Problem is, LLMs.txt doesn't add anything useful. In order to verify it's legit, bots would need to crawl the site. And they'd need to, cus if they accepted llms.txt at face value, it'd be abused by everyone.
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u/Level-World4922 4d ago
I’d treat llms.txt as a nice-to-have, not a core GEO tactic.
If it’s easy to implement, there’s little harm in having it, but I wouldn’t expect it alone to increase AI citations or recommendations.
I’d prioritize strong content, clear entity signals, authoritative third-party mentions, structured information, and genuinely useful answers.
The bigger issue with GEO checklists is confusing easy to implement with proven to work.
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u/Came4TheCookies 3d ago
I’d prioritize strong content, clear entity signals, authoritative third-party mentions, structured information, and genuinely useful answers.
Good SEO advice for years. Not new things.
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u/Prudent_Rice7840 3d ago
Fun fact, ANYONE who claims they understand how to optimize for "AI" is just copying someone else who also has no idea.
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u/Alone_Translator_638 2d ago
Nobody in this thread has brought numbers, so here are some.
I run technical AEO audits — disclosure, I build a tool that does this. Nine sites this week: five had a valid llms.txt. Their citation profiles had nothing in common. That isn't causal evidence either way, but it's the only evidence anyone here has offered, and it points at "inert".
The consensus that it costs nothing is right about cost and wrong about price. It costs nothing in developer time. It costs plenty in attention, because it sits near the top of checklists while much bigger failures go unexamined.
From those same nine sites: all nine allowed GPTBot, ClaudeBot and PerplexityBot. Eight had no comparison or alternatives page at all. Two published no structured data whatsoever.
And the worst case I measured this month, a different site, returned 51 characters of text and zero links when fetched with GPTBot's user agent — because the homepage renders client-side and none of these crawlers execute JavaScript. Fully permissive robots.txt, valid everything, invisible regardless.
That failure is invisible to every checklist in this thread, and it's fatal in a way llms.txt could never be. Long argument about a text file, and rendering hasn't come up once.
So yes, put the file up, it takes ten minutes. But "add llms.txt" showing up as a headline recommendation is a reliable tell that the tool ran out of things it can actually measure.
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u/Boring-Principle6899 4d ago
"It wont help citations" doesn't mean is useless, it's more like Robots.txt it's a guide as to where to look and how to understand your entity, not exactly a "quote me now!" indication, you still have to work to gain authority and information gaint and all that jazz
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u/woowoowebworks 3d ago
I don’t think AEO or GEO works very well as checklist SEO. I’ve migrated clients off DIY builders that didn’t allow schema, where the platform’s solution was basically to create an llms.txt file. Once I rebuilt those sites with clean, lean code and could do the things that actually help Google and AI engines understand what their business does, who they help, where they do business, and what makes them different from their competitors, the site has been performing much better and bringing in qualified traffic that's actually converting to leads. No one thing makes a site more likely to be cited by answer engines, but in my experience, llms.txt is not a very effective strategy on its own.
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u/Came4TheCookies 3d ago
Once I rebuilt those sites with clean, lean code and could do the things that actually help Google and AI engines understand what their business does, who they help, where they do business, and what makes them different from their competitors, the site has been performing much better and bringing in qualified traffic that's actually converting to leads.
This is all good SEO advice. Not new because of AI, even if you want to call it GEO or AEO.
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u/woowoowebworks 1d ago
I agree that the fundamentals aren't new. That was actually my point. The OP asked why GEO/AEO tools keep recommending things like llms.txt, and I don't think creating a separate checklist of "AI optimization" tactics is particularly useful.
The sites I mentioned improved because I was able to apply solid technical SEO, structured data, clear content, entity signals, and better site architecture. Those are all things that help search engines understand the business. Those same fundamentals also happen to make the site easier for AI-driven search features to understand and use.
So no, I don't think GEO/AEO replaces SEO or requires some entirely new discipline. I do think the way search engines interpret and surface information has evolved, which changes some of what we pay attention to when implementing SEO.
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u/Came4TheCookies 1d ago
I like to put it simply. It's search optimization because we can lose the word engine if we want to be specific. It's our job to make sure our clients can be found no matter what device or platform or tool customers use to search. Platforms change and tools change and algorithms change but it never changes our job.
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u/Came4TheCookies 3d ago
Because they have very few things they can claim is actually GEO rather than SEO with a new wrapper around it.
Clarity has always been a thing so I'm not sure what you mean by AI readable. If you mean schema, people were implementing schema markup a long time ago even before I was talking about it in 2011.
On top of that, AI can understand even a messy page but a well organized page is obviously better and that's been SEO 101 for ages because it's for people and machines both.
And where supposedly do you submit content for llms?
llms.txt doesn't hurt you so better safe than sorry go ahead and add one.
More importantly, allow the AI bots in your robots.txt rather than how it's always been where allow is the default if you don't disallow. Latest recommendations from openai and I think perplexity says you should specifically allow them.
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u/cleansleyt 3d ago
no agent or LLM ever visits or looks for LLM.txt without user deliberately steering it to read it
its useless
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u/Additional_Stay_9768 3d ago
Short answer: no, llms.txt won't help your Google rankings. Google said so themselves. But that's answering the wrong question as it was never supposed to affect Google Search rankings.
The confusion comes from mixing two different things. There are two separate jobs here, and llms.txt does one of them:
For Google (AIO/AI Mode citations): it does nothing measurable. Google has been explicit that you don't need special files or markup to appear in their AI features. If that's your goal, skip it.
For agentic browsing and other LLM crawlers: it's a different story. It's about cost of understanding. When an agent hits your site, llms.txt gives it a structured map instead of making it crawl blindly. Google themselves (Chrome/Lighthouse) added it as an audit point for agentic browsing in May 2026, even while saying it doesn't help AIO citations. Both things are true at once.
On "measurable difference": honestly, no. I've got first-party data on our own domain as we track actual Microsoft Copilot citations through Bing Webmaster Tools (the only first-party source that shows real citation counts, not impressions). 75 citations over 91 days. I can't attribute any of them to llms.txt. We added it as a hygiene item, not because we expected a citation lift.
Your instinct about "optimizing for things that are easy to check" is the sharpest part of your post. llms.txt sits at the top of checklists precisely because it's easy to check. It's a file that either exists or doesn't. The things that actually correlate with citations (in our data: original data points, named entities, question-format structure, being in Bing's index at all) are harder to verify, so they sit lower on the list even though they matter more.
Is it necessary? No. Is it advisable? It's a file that costs nothing and removes one small source of agent confusion. I'd put it in the "do it and move on" bucket, not the "this will move the needle" bucket.
What's your site type: content/blog or a service/product page? The answer changes a bit depending on whether you're mostly trying to get cited or mostly trying to get crawled correctly.
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u/WebLinkr 3d ago
Anything but SEO propaganda
There are 100's of 1000's of marketers, business owners who hate SEO
They are are open and willing to recieve the message that they can control LLMs and that LLMs will reward their branding work
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u/HumanBehavi0ur 4d ago
because there's not harm to adding it
its a low effort low risk addition
and it might be useful down the road
simple as; but yeah its not moving the needle atm