Genuine skeptic question, not trolling. We all remember the meta keywords tag turning out to be worthless. Is llms.txt a real signal that AI engines use, or is it a nice-to-have that everyone's hyping because it's new? I don't want to cargo-cult a file onto my site that does nothing.
Fair skepticism, and honest answer: it's not the meta keywords tag, but it's also not a magic ranking lever. Here's the realistic take.
llms.txt is an emerging convention, not yet a guaranteed, universally-honored standard. Adoption by the big engines is uneven and evolving. So it is not the thing that makes or breaks your AI visibility today.
But the cost/benefit is lopsided in its favor: it's a small, static file that gives AI agents a clean, structured summary of your site and points them at your best content. Downside if it's ignored: essentially zero. Upside as adoption grows: you're already positioned. That's a good bet.
Where I'd push back on the hype: don't publish llms.txt and think you're done. The heavy lifting is being crawlable, quotable, and entity-present. llms.txt is the easy 5% you do after the real work, not instead of it.
That's the balanced answer I was hoping for. 'Cheap insurance, not a silver bullet.' Generated one from the tool, moving on to the crawlability stuff which is clearly where the real work is.
Appreciate the honesty here. So many tools would just scream YES YOU NEED IT to sell the feature. The 'easy 5% after the real work' framing is exactly right.
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