A TXT record, as the abbreviation suggests, is a record, which holds data in human-readable form and not code. It could be created for a domain name or a subdomain for various purposes. Search engines like Yahoo, for example, have different ways of confirming you're the owner of a given domain name and one of them is actually by creating a TXT record with certain text which they provide and that you should use as the record value. Exactly the same verification method is used by some analytics platforms that monitor the traffic to your web sites as well. Of course, in such a 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 furthermore used in case you activated the so-called SPF protection for your emails so that you can prevent them from being forged. In such a case, the record contains information showing that a certain digital message is sent from a reliable and authorized mail server. You may use a TXT record for any other information as well, like your business details, for instance.
