A TXT record, as the abbreviation implies, is a record, that keeps information in human-readable form and not code. It may be set up for a domain or a subdomain for various purposes. Search engines like Yahoo, for instance, have different ways of verifying that you're the owner of a particular domain and one of them is actually by creating a TXT record with certain text which they provide and which you will need to use as the record value. The same verification method is being employed by some analytics platforms that keep track of the traffic to your sites as well. Needless to say, in such a case the content of the record will be read by a robot, but it'll still be in human-readable form. A TXT record is also used when you activated the so-called SPF protection for your emails so that you can prevent them from being forged. In cases like this, the record contains info showing that a certain digital message is sent from a reliable and authorized mail server. You may use a TXT record for any sort of other information also, just like your company details, for instance.