{"id":41,"slug":"llms-txt-low-traffic-skepticism","title":"OtterlyAI: /llms.txt sees 0.1% of AI-bot traffic — performs worse than average content page","kind":"reference","scope":"business","status":"current","audiences":["claude-code","dev","candid-team"],"topics":["ai-citation","measurement"],"reference_body":"**Claim:** OtterlyAI's 90-day measurement reported **84 of 62,100 AI-bot requests (0.1%)** targeted /llms.txt files — *worse* than an average content page on the same domains.\n\n**Source:** Kai Spriestersbach, \"The llms.txt is dead,\" Medium.\n\n**Confidence:** Single-source. Corroborated qualitatively by reports that **Google added llms.txt to its docs in December 2024 then removed them within 24 hours**.\n\n**Background:** The /llms.txt proposal was published by Jeremy Howard (Answer.AI) on **September 3, 2024** — a curated Markdown file at the website root specifically for LLM retrieval. <https://answer.ai/posts/2024-09-03-llmstxt.html>. Mintlify rolled it out across all hosted docs sites in Nov 2024 making thousands of sites llms.txt-aware \"practically overnight.\"\n\n**Implication for Candid:** Don't ship llms.txt as a citation strategy. If you ship it at all, ship it as a courtesy — the durable value is structured content on the actual pages, not the index file. Brief 3 explicitly recommends acknowledging this skepticism early to \"inoculate against trend-chasing.\"","rationale_body":null,"metadata":null,"links":{"outgoing":[],"incoming":[{"slug":"research-brief-kb-backed-website-methodology","title":"Research brief: The knowledge-base-backed website (piece 3 of 15)","kind":"reference","scope":"business","link_type":"relates-to"}]},"created_at":"2026-05-22T18:57:39.637Z","updated_at":"2026-05-22T18:57:39.637Z"}