Barry Schwartz is the CEO of RustyBrick, founder of the Search Engine Roundtable, and News Editor of Search Engine Land. He can be followed on Twitter @rustybrick.

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“No,” John Mueller said when asked whether the presence of LLMs.txt files on some Google properties constitutes an endorsement from Google.

The question originated on Bluesky when Esben Rasmussen wrote:

“Sorry for being late to the party, but I just spotted this ai.google.dev/api/llms.txt. @johnmu.com Is this an endorsement from Google?”

John Mueller replied on Bluesky:

“I’m tempted to say something snarky since this has come up so often, but to be direct, no.”

Screenshot of the Bluesky conversation (originally posted by John Mueller).

A few weeks earlier, Google’s CMS platform began supporting LLMs.txt files, and the file was added to many of Google’s developer documentation pages, including the Google Search developer docs. Shortly after, the Search team removed it from its specific docs, but other teams left the file in place. Mueller clarified that the file was added for other reasons, not as an endorsement.

Google has repeatedly stated that:

• “No one uses the LLMs.txt file.”

• “Google won’t use it.”

• “It can be useless.”

• “You probably should noindex it if you do use it.”

Thus, the Search team is not a fan of the LLMs.txt file, though having one is unlikely to cause any harm.

Discussion of the issue can be found on Bluesky.