What Is llms.txt, and Does Your Website Need One?

What is llms.txt, and do you need one?

llms.txt is a plain-text file at the root of a website that summarizes the site for AI tools: who the business is, what it offers, and links to the pages that matter. It is a proposed convention and not a standard the major AI companies have committed to. It costs little to add and some tools read it, so it is worth having, and it does not change rankings by itself.

By Gavin Levine, Founder and Principal Consultant

What goes in it

A title: the name of the business or site
A short summary: what the business does, for whom and where
Sections of links to the key pages, each with a one-line description
The facts an assistant is most likely to be asked for: services, prices or price ranges, areas served, how to get in touch

What it does and does not do

It gives a tool that looks for it a clean, short version of your site, without navigation, scripts or styling in the way. It does not grant or deny access, which is the job of robots.txt, and it does not replace a sitemap, which lists every page for search engines.

Nobody can promise that an assistant will read it or act on it. Treat it as a cheap addition, not a strategy.

How it sits beside the other files

robots.txt says which crawlers may read which pages. The sitemap lists the pages and when they changed. Structured data labels the facts on each page. llms.txt is a human-readable summary of the whole site. A site that wants to be found has all four, and keeps the facts in them identical.

Questions people ask

Does llms.txt improve my Google ranking?

No. It is not a Google ranking signal. Its use is for AI tools that choose to read it.

Where does llms.txt go?

At the root of the site, so it is served at yourdomain.com/llms.txt, as plain text in Markdown format.

Is llms.txt the same as robots.txt?

No. robots.txt controls access for crawlers. llms.txt describes the site’s content and controls nothing.