AI search
llms.txt explained: what it is and whether your site needs one
A plain-language look at the llms.txt proposal, what it contains, and what you should realistically expect from it.
You may have seen advice to add an llms.txt file to your website. It is a proposal for a simple Markdown file served at `/llms.txt` that summarises your site and links to your most important pages in a format that is easy for language models to read.
What goes in it
- A title and one-paragraph description of your business.
- Sections with links to key pages, each with a one-line description.
- Optionally, links to clean text versions of long documents.
Does it help?
Here is the honest answer: it is a proposal driven by the community, and major providers have not confirmed that they rely on it for ranking or citations. Some tools and agents do read it. Because the cost is tiny, many sites publish one as a low-effort signal.
What matters more
Do the fundamentals first. Fast pages, clear content, structured data and open crawler access influence far more than a single text file. See what is AI search optimization for the bigger picture.
How to add one
Create a Markdown file that follows the proposal format, serve it at the root of your domain and keep it in sync when you add or remove key pages. On this site we generate ours automatically from our services and pages.
Frequently asked questions
Is llms.txt the same as robots.txt?
No. robots.txt tells crawlers what they may access. llms.txt is a curated summary meant to help models understand your content.
Could llms.txt hurt my SEO?
No. It is a separate text file and does not affect how search engines index your pages.
- #llms.txt
- #AI crawlers
- #AI search
Need help?
AI search optimization
Get cited by ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and AI Overviews.
Learn more →