# llms.txt adoption: the top 100 domains run 1.5x ahead of everyone else

> From our July 2026 crawl of the Tranco top 5,000: 11% of the top 100 serve a spec-valid llms.txt vs 7.4% for ranks 101–5,000. Adoption concentrates at the very top of the web.

Source: https://geoplaybooks.com/blog/2026-07-12-llms-txt-top100/

# llms.txt adoption: the top 100 domains run 1.5x ahead of everyone else

In our July 2026 crawl of the Tranco top 5,000 domains, **11% of the top 100** serve a spec-valid llms.txt against **7.4% for ranks 101–5,000** — a 1.5x gap. The biggest sites on the web are adopting the AI-crawler index faster than everyone below them, while overall adoption sits at 7.5%.

The numbers come from our own monthly crawl — every domain fetched directly, files parsed against the [llmstxt.org spec], full method and CC BY 4.0 dataset on the [study page](/data/llms-txt-adoption-2026/).

## The July 2026 snapshot

> 7.5% of 5,000 serve a spec-valid file 11% valid in the top 100 8.2% serve something malformed

A few more cuts from the same run, dated July 11, 2026:

- 375 of 5,000 domains serve a spec-valid llms.txt; another 411 serve something malformed at that path — HTML, redirects, half-formatted Markdown.

- 31.8% of domains didn't respond to a plain 5-second fetch at all. Of the 3,410 that did respond, valid files run at 11%.

- Only 1.4% ship the llms-full.txt companion.

More files are malformed than valid. Publishing is easy; following a one-page spec apparently isn't — which is why the [validator](/tools/llms-txt-validator/) exists.

## What the top-100 gap suggests

The sites with the most to lose from AI answers — and the best-staffed platform teams — are moving first. That's the usual shape of an early standard: the head adopts while the middle waits for proof. Whether crawlers reward the file is still contested (our [llms.txt guide](/llms-txt/) referees that fight honestly), but the cost side is settled: a curated index is an afternoon of work.

If you want to be counted in the valid column, the [generator](/tools/llms-txt-generator/) builds a spec-clean file in the browser, and the crawl re-runs monthly on a cron — the trend line updates itself on the [study page](/data/llms-txt-adoption-2026/).