A TXT record, as the abbreviation suggests, is a record, that keeps info in human-readable form and not code. It can be created for a domain name or a subdomain for many different purposes. Search engines like Yahoo, for example, have different ways of verifying that you're the owner of a particular domain and one of them is in fact by creating a TXT record with certain text that they provide and that you should use as the record value. The same verification method is being employed by some analytics platforms that monitor the traffic to your Internet sites as well. Needless to say, in such a case the content of the record will be read by a robot, but it will still be in human-readable form. A TXT record is also used if you enable the so-called SPF protection for your emails in order to prevent them from being forged. In cases like this, the record contains information showing that a particular digital message is sent from a trusted and authorized mail server. You could use a TXT record for any sort of other information also, such as your company details, as an example.
