A TXT record, as the abbreviation implies, is a record, which holds info in human-readable form and not code. It could be created for a domain or a subdomain for many different purposes. Search engines like Yahoo, for instance, have different ways of verifying you are the owner of a given domain name and one of them is actually by creating a TXT record with certain text that they provide and that you must use as the record value. The exact same verification method is used by some analytics platforms that keep track of the traffic to your Internet sites as well. Needless to say, in this case the content of the record is going to be read by a robot, but it'll still be in human-readable form. A TXT record is also used if you activated the so-called SPF protection for your e-mails so that you can shield them from being forged. In cases like this, the record contains data showing that a certain electronic message is sent from a reliable and authorized mail server. You can use a TXT record for any kind of other information as well, just like your business details, for instance.