diff --git a/.gitignore b/.gitignore
index 5bfcab4c56c9..096602e43a19 100644
--- a/.gitignore
+++ b/.gitignore
@@ -34,7 +34,6 @@ zcgo_flags*.go
 build/Railroad.jar
 
 # Bazel generated symlinks
-/bazel-*
 /_bazel
 
 # Per-user .bazelrc
diff --git a/bazel-out b/bazel-out
new file mode 100644
index 000000000000..6fd24fbd9518
--- /dev/null
+++ b/bazel-out
@@ -0,0 +1,3 @@
+This placeholder file prevents bazel from writing a symlink here which points to its output dir.
+That symlink often causes tools that traverse the repo to get confused when they find lots of extra go files.
+The _bazel/out symlink points to the same thing, but go doesn't traverse into paths that start with _.