What is llms.txt?

Why llms.txt matters for AI search

AI assistants and answer engines increasingly read the web to answer questions. A clear llms.txt gives them a curated, unambiguous summary of who you are and where your best content lives - improving how accurately ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews and Gemini represent and cite your business. It’s a core part of Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO).

llms.txt template (copy & paste)

Here’s a simple llms.txt template. Replace the placeholders with your own details, save it as llms.txt, and upload it to your site root - or skip the copy-paste and use the free llms.txt generator to build a correct file in under a minute.

# Your Company Name

> One or two sentences describing what your business does, who it’s for, and what makes it distinct.

## Key pages
- Home: https://example.com
- About: https://example.com/about
- Products / Services: https://example.com/services
- Contact: https://example.com/contact

## Key facts
- What you do: ...
- Who you serve: ...
- Where you operate: ...

## Contact
- Email: hello@example.com

How to create and add an llms.txt

• Start with an H1 (#) of your business name.
• Add a one-line summary in a blockquote (>) - what you do, for whom.
• List your key pages with absolute URLs.
• Add key facts (services, location) and contact details.
• Save the file as llms.txt (plain text / Markdown).
• Upload it to your domain root so it serves at yourdomain.com/llms.txt.

What an llms.txt file contains

An llms.txt file is short and human-readable. At minimum it has your business name as an H1, a one-line summary in a blockquote, and a list of your key pages as absolute URLs. Most files also add a “Key facts” section (what you do, who you serve, where you operate) and contact details. The whole file is usually under a hundred lines - it’s an index for machines, not a second copy of your website.

llms.txt for SEO: does it help?

Honest answer: there is no evidence yet that llms.txt changes Google rankings, and no major AI provider has confirmed it reads the file. Treat it as an AI-visibility measure rather than a ranking factor. The upside is that it costs a few minutes, carries no risk, and forces you to state plainly what your site is and which pages matter most - and if adoption arrives, you’re already covered. The work that reliably moves AI visibility today is crawler access, structured data and a clear entity, which our AI search optimisation guide covers.

llms.txt vs llms-full.txt

Two files get discussed together. llms.txt is the concise index - a summary plus links to your most important pages, small enough for a model to read in full. llms-full.txt is the maximal version, with your actual content inlined into one large Markdown file so a model can read everything without following a link. For most sites the index is the one worth having; llms-full.txt makes sense for documentation sets, but it gets large fast and needs regenerating whenever your content changes.

robots.txt and llms.txt: how they work together

They solve different problems, so you want both. robots.txt controls which URLs a crawler may visit; llms.txt tells the crawlers you allow what your site is about and where the good content is. An llms.txt is pointless if your robots.txt blocks the AI crawlers in the first place - set your crawler permissions with the robots.txt generator, then publish your llms.txt so the bots you let in get a clean map.

Check your llms.txt (free)

Not sure if yours is set up correctly? The free AI readiness checker detects whether your llms.txt exists and is valid, alongside your structured data, entities and overall AI search readiness - with a prioritised action list.

llms.txt only helps if the AI crawlers are allowed in - check and fix that with the robots.txt generator, then confirm which engines can actually reach you with the AI Visibility Checker. For the full picture, read AI search optimisation.

llms.txt frequently asked questions