{"id":10172,"date":"2026-06-17T09:20:16","date_gmt":"2026-06-17T01:20:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/longzhuplatform.com\/?p=10172"},"modified":"2026-06-17T09:20:16","modified_gmt":"2026-06-17T01:20:16","slug":"google-says-llms-txt-files-wont-harm-or-help-your-search-rankings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/longzhuplatform.com\/?p=10172","title":{"rendered":"Google says LLMS.txt files won\u2019t harm or help your search rankings"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p> <div id=\"articleContent\" itemprop=\"articlebody\"> <div class=\"bialty-container\"> <p>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.<\/p> <p><strong>What Google wrote. <\/strong>I bolded the portion that is new, where Google wrote that Google Search does not use AI text files, markup or Markdown files.<\/p> <ul class=\"wp-block-list\"> <li>\u201cYou don\u2019t need to create new machine readable files, AI text files, markup, or Markdown to appear in Google Search (including its generative AI capabilities), as <strong>Google Search itself doesn\u2019t use them<\/strong>. Note that Google may discover, crawl, and index\u00a0many kinds of files\u00a0in addition to HTML on a website: this doesn\u2019t mean that the file is treated in a special way.\u201d<\/li> <\/ul> <p>Google also added a new note that reads:<\/p> <ul class=\"wp-block-list\"> <li>\u201cIt\u2019s 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\u2019t harm (nor help) your visibility or rankings in Google Search, as Google Search ignores them.\u201d<\/li> <\/ul> <p>Here\u2019s a screenshot of this section:<\/p> <figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"2048\" height=\"950\" alt=\"Google Llm Doc Update Scaled\" class=\"wp-image-480271\" srcset=\"https:\/\/searchengineland.com\/wp-content\/seloads\/2026\/06\/google-llm-doc-update-scaled.png 2048w, https:\/\/searchengineland.com\/wp-content\/seloads\/2026\/06\/google-llm-doc-update-768x356.png 768w, https:\/\/searchengineland.com\/wp-content\/seloads\/2026\/06\/google-llm-doc-update-1536x712.png 1536w\" data-lazy-sizes=\"(max-width: 2048px) 100vw, 2048px\" src=\"https:\/\/searchengineland.com\/wp-content\/seloads\/2026\/06\/google-llm-doc-update-scaled.png\" title=\"Google says LLMS.txt files won\u2019t harm or help your search rankings\u63d2\u56fe\" \/><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"2048\" height=\"950\" src=\"https:\/\/searchengineland.com\/wp-content\/seloads\/2026\/06\/google-llm-doc-update-scaled.png\" alt=\"Google Llm Doc Update Scaled\" class=\"wp-image-480271\" srcset=\"https:\/\/searchengineland.com\/wp-content\/seloads\/2026\/06\/google-llm-doc-update-scaled.png 2048w, https:\/\/searchengineland.com\/wp-content\/seloads\/2026\/06\/google-llm-doc-update-768x356.png 768w, https:\/\/searchengineland.com\/wp-content\/seloads\/2026\/06\/google-llm-doc-update-1536x712.png 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2048px) 100vw, 2048px\" title=\"Google says LLMS.txt files won\u2019t harm or help your search rankings\u63d2\u56fe1\" \/><\/figure> <p><strong>Dig deeper.<\/strong><\/p> <p><strong>Why we care. <\/strong>There\u2019s 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\u2019t help your rankings, and it won\u2019t hurt them either. <\/p> <\/div> <hr\/> <p class=\"article-disclosure\"> <em>Search Engine Land is owned by Semrush. We remain committed to providing high-quality coverage of marketing topics. Unless otherwise noted, this page\u2019s content was written by either an employee or a paid contractor of Semrush Inc.<\/em> <\/p> <hr\/> <div class=\"author-about py-4\"> <div class=\"card bg-light\"> <div class=\"card-body p-2 clearfix\"> <div class=\"authorImage float-start me-3 mb-2\"> <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"img-fluid rounded avatar-border flex-shrink-0\" src=\"https:\/\/searchengineland.com\/wp-content\/seloads\/2025\/05\/1630496745425.jpeg.webp\" alt=\"Barry Schwartz\" width=\"140\" height=\"140\" title=\"Google says LLMS.txt files won\u2019t harm or help your search rankings\u63d2\u56fe2\" \/> <\/div> <div class=\"author-body\"> <div id=\"authorBio-251\" class=\"author-desc\"> Barry Schwartz is a technologist and a Contributing Editor to Search Engine Land and a member of the programming team for SMX events. He owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on very advanced SEM topics.<\/p> <p>In 2019, Barry was awarded the Outstanding Community Services Award from Search Engine Land, in 2018 he was awarded the US Search Awards the &#8220;US Search Personality Of The Year,&#8221; you can learn more over here and in 2023 he was listed as a top 50 most influential PPCer by Marketing O&#8217;Clock.<\/p> <p>Barry can be followed\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/rustybrick\/\">on X here<\/a>\u00a0and you can learn more about\u00a0Barry Schwartz over here or on his personal site. <\/p> <\/div><\/div> <\/p><\/div> <\/p><\/div> <\/div> <p> <!-- START SIDEBAR LOWER SPACE --><\/p> <p><!-- END SIDEBAR LOWER SPACE --><\/p><\/div> <p><script async src=\"\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script>News#Google #LLMS.txt #files #wont #harm #search #rankings1781659216<\/p> ","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>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 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10173,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[512,75,40542,4318,83,1650,95,8798],"class_list":["post-10172","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-careers","tag-files","tag-google","tag-harm","tag-llms-txt","tag-news","tag-rankings","tag-search","tag-wont"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/longzhuplatform.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10172","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/longzhuplatform.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/longzhuplatform.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/longzhuplatform.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/longzhuplatform.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10172"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/longzhuplatform.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10172\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/longzhuplatform.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/10173"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/longzhuplatform.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10172"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/longzhuplatform.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10172"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/longzhuplatform.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10172"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}