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Top 5,000 domain adoption is still only 16.1%

Among the top 5,000 cited domains, llms.txt adoption is 16.1%.

Even the more visible end of the corpus is not overwhelmingly using llms.txt.

The numbers behind it.

Top 5k adoption
Adoption among the top 5,000 cited domains.
16.1%

The evidence.

Source
The llms.txt Effect

MeasureResult
Top 5k adoption

Adoption among the top 5,000 cited domains.

16.1%

What this study measured.

An observational snapshot.
Tested 14 March 2026.

Read the full methodology

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

The highest-performing cited sites are not clustering around a universal llms.txt playbook.

“Among the top 5,000 cited domains, llms.txt adoption is 16.1%.”

The llms.txt Effect - Trakkr Research · Top 5,000 domain adoption is still only 16.1%
The llms.txt Effect · Trakkr Research · Updated 4 September 2026

https://trakkr.ai/trakkr-research/llmstxt-effect/facts/top-five-thousand-domain-adoption-is-still-only-sixteen-percent
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