Not sure where to start? Take a guided tour.
AI Site Grader
AI Query Scanner
llms.txt GeneratorGovernment and academic sites barely use llms.txt
Government and academic sites show only 1.5% llms.txt adoption in the study.
Some of the web’s most authoritative sectors barely use the file.
The numbers behind it.
- Government/academic adoption
- Much lower adoption outside SaaS-heavy sectors.
- 1.5%
The evidence.
Source
The llms.txt Effect
| Measure | Result |
|---|---|
| Government/academic adoption Much lower adoption outside SaaS-heavy sectors. | 1.5% |
Population and method
Built from HTTP scans of 37,894 AI-cited domains, linked to 337,362 citations and 882 citation snapshots in the Trakkr corpus.
Where the evidence stops
This is an observational study. It measures correlation with citation outcomes, not a controlled experiment.
Adoption is uneven by sector, so raw averages can hide category concentration in SaaS and developer tooling.
The top-5,000 test returns p=0.85. The full scanned sample returns p<0.001 with reported r=-0.065. Neither establishes a causal effect. The public aggregates do not include confidence intervals or document the cohort for citation means and medians well enough to recompute the tests.
What to do with this
Authority and citability clearly do not depend on llms.txt adoption.
Cite this fact.
Source study: llms.txt Effect“Government and academic sites show only 1.5% llms.txt adoption in the study.”
The llms.txt Effect - Trakkr Research · Government and academic sites barely use llms.txt
The llms.txt Effect · Trakkr Research · Updated 4 September 2026