Developing
Mueller spoke about Google's systems; other AI crawlers may behave differently.
In 60 seconds
- In episode 114 of Google's Search Off the Record, published October 1, 2026, John Mueller said llms.txt is not a sitemap and Google's systems cannot process it as one.
- He said "the hope is bigger than the reality" and "I would not treat that as a priority."
- PPC Land cites ProGEO.ai (March 2026): 76% of Fortune 500 companies declare a sitemap in robots.txt and 7.4% have llms.txt.
- It cites Ahrefs (July 2026): 97% of llms.txt files received zero requests in a month.
Impact Layer
- What changed
- A Google voice has put in writing that llms.txt is not a Google signal, and third-party data suggests little crawler use.
- Why it matters
- Teams are investing in llms.txt hoping for AI visibility; the evidence for benefit is thin.
- Who is affected
- SEO and GEO leads deciding where to spend effort.
- Martech stack area
- SEO & Search, Content
- Stack impact
- Keep your XML sitemap and canonical URLs in order first. Treat llms.txt as low-cost and optional, and check your logs for who requests it.
- Business impact
- Low Mueller's remarks concern Google's systems. The ProGEO.ai and Ahrefs figures are cited second-hand in PPC Land's newsletter and we did not read the studies.
- Related technologies
- Related vendors
- What to watch
- Whether any large AI crawler documents use of llms.txt.
In episode 114 of Google’s Search Off the Record, “Do sitemaps still matter?”, published October 1, 2026, Google’s John Mueller and Martin Splitt discussed sitemaps. Mueller was direct about llms.txt: it is not a sitemap and Google’s systems cannot process it as one. “The hope is bigger than the reality,” he said, “I would not treat that as a priority.”
What the data say
- ProGEO.ai (March 2026), as cited by PPC Land: 76% of Fortune 500 companies declare a sitemap in robots.txt and 7.4% have an llms.txt.
- Ahrefs (July 2026), as cited: 97% of llms.txt files received zero requests in a month.
What Mueller said about AI crawlers
AI training crawlers usually have no console for submitting sitemaps. Mueller said he has seen AI crawlers read his sitemap and RSS files in server logs, which may be what a site owner wants.
Our read
Mueller speaks for Google only. Still, adoption is low and requests are rare, so the sensible order is canonical URLs and a clean XML sitemap first. If you publish an llms.txt, it costs little, but check your own logs to see whether anything reads it.
Sources
- PPC Land: Google may skip sitemaps on sites it deems low quality (opens in a new tab)
Source of Mueller's llms.txt remarks and the episode details.
- PPC Land: October 6, 2026 newsletter (Google Search Off the Record episode 114) (opens in a new tab)
The newsletter section citing the ProGEO.ai and Ahrefs llms.txt figures.