Ahrefs: 97% of llms.txt files were never requested
The Ahrefs study of 137 thousand domains - how many sites publish llms.txt, who requests it and why the numbers need to be read with caveats
On June 15, 2026, Ahrefs published a study of requests to llms.txt. It is the largest measurement so far made from request logs rather than from the presence of the file.
What was measured
The sample is 137,210 domains connected to Ahrefs web analytics. The period is May 2026. The authors looked at who has the file and who requested it.
| Measure | Value |
|---|---|
| Domains with the file | 28% |
| Files with no requests in a month | 97% |
| Requests made by bots | 96% |
| Share of SEO audit tools | 21.7% |
| Share of AI bots | 19.5% |
Among AI bots, agents made the most requests, and bots that collect answers to user questions made the fewest: about one percent.
How to read it
28% is an upper bound. Ahrefs analytics is installed by people who work on promotion. A crawl of the whole web gives about two percent.
“Requested” does not mean “used”. A log shows a request to an address. What the bot did with the content is not visible in the log.
A notable share of requests comes from checking tools. The file is requested by an audit more often than by an AI system.
What the study does not show
- That the file is useless for agents in code editors: there the user gives the address, and that request is rare but purposeful.
- How the picture changes after the second edition of the proposal, which came out in August.
What a site owner should do
Look in your own server logs to see who requests /llms.txt. It is the only measurement that concerns your site: How to measure AI visibility. A summary of all studies: Does llms.txt work.