The Cats.txt SEO Hoax That Fooled AI (And What It Reveals About LLMs)

E1061: Breaking down one of the most interesting SEO experiments in recent memory: the Cats.txt hoax created by Mark Williams-Cook. He invented a completely fake "standard" called cats.txt, published formal documentation for it, and made it look legitimate. Soon after, major crawlers were requesting the file. Google indexed it. AI overviews described it as real. ChatGPT even said it could help you rank in search and large language models. Then the experiment went viral. Now AI systems acknowledge that it started as a joke. But before that happened, they confidently explained how it worked and why it mattered. This episode covers: - What the Cats.txt experiment actually was - How Googlebot, GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot, BingBot, AppleBot and others crawled it - Why ChatGPT initially claimed Cats.txt could help with rankings - What this reveals about how LLMs retrieve and synthesize information - Why "LLMs.txt" style tactics are often misunderstood - How consensus-looking content becomes treated as truth - The circular authority problem in AI systems - Why you can't reliably ask an LLM how its own infrastructure works - How this connects to previous experiments with fake schema markup The key takeaway: large language models do not inherently know what is authoritative. If enough content presents something as real, the model may confidently describe it as real. LLMs are very good at modeling what people say is true. That is not the same as knowing what is true. I also explain why you do not need fancy technical files like LLMs.txt to show up in AI-driven systems. A clear About page, strong positioning, relevant landing pages, brand mentions, and real marketing fundamentals will do more for you than trying to implement something that sounds advanced. If you are a business owner and want to show up in Google and in AI systems: - Target high-intent searches tied directly to what you sell - Build conversion-focused landing pages, not just blog posts - Structure your site around demand - Earn links and brand mentions - Do marketing that makes people want to search for you That is what moves the needle. ⭐️ Introducing cats.txt: The Missing Standard for SEO and GEO - https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/introducing-catstxt-missing-standard-seo-geo-mark-williams-cook-dijre/ ⭐️ Cats.txt - https://catstxt.org/ ⭐️ Lily Ray's post about Cats.txt - https://x.com/lilyraynyc/status/2058119840565436567 💎 Compact Keywords - My SEO Course - Get paying customers through SEO - Clear step-by-step video breakdowns - SEO templates to be copied and adapted for your products and services: https://compactkeywords.com/ 00:00 Cats.txt Prank 00:43 Proof It Fooled Crawlers 02:07 Why LLMs.txt Fails 03:19 Authority And Feedback Loops 04:02 Inside Cats.txt Spec 05:18 Fake Schema Parallel 05:53 Simple GEO Advice 07:35 Wrap Up The Edward Show. Your daily search engine optimization podcast: https://edwardsturm.com/the-edward-show/ #generativeengineoptimization #searchengineoptimization #answerengineoptimization #seo