AI Citation Share Ships, New Data Doubts LLMS.txt – SEO Pulse via @sejournal, @MattGSouthern

Microsoft's Bing search engine began rolling out AI Citation Share this week, a feature designed to attribute AI-generated answers to their original sources. This initiative aims to address concerns about the originality and attribution of information presented by large language models (LLMs). Concurrently, new data indicates that LLMs.txt files, intended to guide AI behavior regarding website content, are largely being ignored by AI models. A study by SEO Pulse found that out of 100,000 websites analyzed, only 0.01% of AI crawlers respected the directives within these files, suggesting a significant gap between developer intent and AI execution. In parallel, Google has announced its support for two new agent specifications, aiming to standardize how AI agents interact with web services and platforms. These specifications are part of a broader effort to foster interoperability and trust in AI-driven automation. The UK's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) also issued an order this week, compelling Google to implement fairer search ranking practices. This regulatory action is intended to prevent Google from unfairly favoring its own services in search results, promoting a more competitive online environment. The combined developments highlight ongoing efforts by major tech players and regulators to shape the future of AI integration into search and web services, focusing on attribution, adherence to guidelines, and fair competition.