Definition

llms.txt

llms.txt is a standardized file placed at your website root that helps language models understand your site structure and content.

TL;DR

Key Definition

Like robots.txt guides search engines, llms.txt guides AI. It provides a structured summary of your site, key pages, and important information to facilitate LLM indexing.
Importance

Why It Matters

  • Helps AI quickly understand your business
  • Points to your most important content
  • Improves response accuracy about you
  • Emerging standard adopted by more and more sites
  • Easy to implement with significant impact

How It Works

The llms.txt file provides AI models with a structured entry point to understand your site.

File Structure

The file contains a description of your business, a list of your key pages with their descriptions, and important metadata.

Location

Place the file at your domain root: yoursite.com/llms.txt. It must be publicly accessible.

Updates

Update the file when you add new important pages or significantly modify your offering.

Metrics

How to Measure It

  • Verify file accessibility (200 OK)
  • Test AI understanding before/after implementation
  • Track AI visibility improvements
  • Analyze changes in citations
Pitfalls

Common Mistakes

  • Forgetting to update the file after major changes
  • Including too many non-essential pages
  • Descriptions too vague or marketing-focused
  • Not verifying file accessibility
  • Ignoring multilingual versions

Quick Checklist

Follow these steps to get started.

  • List your 10-20 most important pages
  • Write a clear description of your business
  • Create concise descriptions for each page
  • Generate the file with a tool or manually
  • Upload to your site root
  • Verify accessibility via yoursite.com/llms.txt
  • Test AI understanding with a few queries
  • Plan quarterly updates

Examples

Basic Structure

# My Company > Short description of our main activity ## Key Pages - /products: Our solutions catalog - /pricing: Our rates and plans

With Metadata

Add information like your industry, main competitors, and key differentiators to help AI better position you.

Frequently Asked Questions