A TXT record, as the abbreviation suggests, is a record, which holds info in human-readable form and not code. It could be created for a domain name or a subdomain for a variety of purposes. Search engines like Yahoo, for example, have different ways of making sure you're the owner of a given domain and one of them is actually by creating a TXT record with unique text that they provide and that you should use as the record value. Exactly the same verification method is employed by some analytics platforms that keep track of the traffic to your websites as well. Of course, in this situation the content of the record is going to be read by a robot, but it will still be in human-readable form. A TXT record is furthermore employed when you enable the so-called SPF protection for your email addresses so that you can protect them from being forged. In cases like this, the record contains info showing that a given digital message is sent from a trusted and authorized mail server. You can use a TXT record for any other information also, such as your company details, for example.