llms.txt is a proposed plain-text (Markdown) file at the root of a website that gives language models a short, curated map of the site's most useful pages. It was proposed in 2024 and has been adopted by many documentation sites, but it is not an official web standard, and major search engines have not said they use it for rankings or AI answers. It is cheap to add and can help AI tools that do read it, so add one, but don't expect it to change your visibility on its own.
What llms.txt is
llms.txt is a proposal, published in September 2024 by Jeremy Howard of Answer.AI, for a file at yoursite.com/llms.txt. Its purpose is to give large language models a concise, human-readable summary of a website: what it is, and which pages matter most, with a short note on each.
The reasoning: websites are built for people, with navigation, scripts and layout that make it harder for a model to find the essential information within a limited amount of text. A small Markdown file can point straight to the good stuff.
What it looks like
The format is simple Markdown:
- An H1 with the name of the site or project.
- A blockquote with a short summary.
- Optional paragraphs with more context.
- H2 sections containing lists of links, each with a short description.
- An optional section named Optional for links that can be skipped when space is tight.
Here is a shortened version of ours:
# Thryv Studio
> Thryv Studio is an SEO, AEO and GEO agency. AI agents and human
> strategists get brands ranked on Google and recommended by AI assistants.
## Services
- [SEO](https://thryvstudio.com/services/seo): Rank on Google for the searches that bring buyers.
- [AEO](https://thryvstudio.com/services/aeo): Get named and cited in AI assistants' answers.
## Guides
- [What is AEO?](https://thryvstudio.com/insights/what-is-aeo): A plain-English guide.You can see the full file at thryvstudio.com/llms.txt.
Does it help?
Honestly: it depends on who reads it.
- It is not a ranking factor. Google representatives have said publicly that Google Search does not use llms.txt, and at the time of writing no major AI assistant has documented using it to decide what to recommend.
- Some AI tools do read it. Coding assistants, agents and documentation tools that fetch a site on request can use it to find the right pages quickly. That is why it caught on first with developer documentation.
- It costs almost nothing. A well-written file takes an hour and does no harm.
The things that measurably affect AI visibility are still crawler access, indexing, clear content, entity signals and third-party mentions. Treat llms.txt as a helpful extra, not a strategy. Our guide on getting cited by ChatGPT covers what matters more.
How to write one
- Start with a one-paragraph summary of who you are and what you do, in plain words. This is the most important part.
- Pick your best pages. Services or products, key guides, pricing, About and contact. Ten to thirty links is plenty.
- Write one line per link saying what the reader will find there, not marketing copy.
- Group links under H2 headings such as Services, Guides and Company.
- Put it at the root of your domain as
/llms.txt, served as plain text. - Keep it current. Update it when you add or remove important pages. Ideally, generate it from the same source as your sitemap.
llms.txt, robots.txt and sitemap.xml compared
| Aspect | robots.txt | sitemap.xml | llms.txt |
|---|---|---|---|
| Purpose | Tells crawlers what they may access | Lists every page you want indexed | Summarises the site and its best pages |
| Audience | All crawlers | Search engines | Language models and AI tools |
| Format | Plain-text rules | XML | Markdown |
| Status | Long-established standard | Long-established standard | Community proposal |
| Effect on rankings | Controls access | Helps discovery | None documented |