What is llms.txt?
llms.txt is a proposed standard — a markdown file served from your website root that gives large language models a concise, structured overview of your site. Think of it as the LLM-era counterpart to robots.txt: where robots.txt says what bots may crawl, llms.txt says what your site is about.
The format is simple markdown: an # H1 with your site name, a blockquote summary, and ## sections listing your key pages as markdown links with absolute URLs. AI systems can ingest this far more reliably than scraping your navigation, which makes accurate citation of your content more likely.
Upload the generated file to https://yoursite.com/llms.txt, then verify AI crawlers are actually allowed to fetch your site with our free AI crawler check.
Frequently asked questions
What is an llms.txt file?
llms.txt is a markdown file placed at your site root (yoursite.com/llms.txt) that gives large language models a clean, structured summary of your website: what it is, its key pages, and how to contact you. It is the LLM equivalent of robots.txt + sitemap.xml — a machine-readable front door for AI crawlers.
Does llms.txt actually help AI visibility?
It removes friction. AI systems retrieve cleaner context from a well-structured llms.txt than from scraping navigation menus, which makes accurate citation more likely. It does not guarantee citations — content quality and authority still decide — but a missing llms.txt is a needless handicap, and adding one takes minutes.
Where do I put the generated llms.txt file?
Upload it to your website root so it is served at https://yoursite.com/llms.txt with a text/plain or text/markdown content type. Most hosts and CDNs serve static .txt files from the root automatically — just drop the file in your public/ or web root folder.
How do I check if AI crawlers can even reach my site?
An llms.txt only helps if AI bots are allowed to fetch your site. Run our free AI crawler check to test your robots.txt for AI-bot blocks (GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot), verify llms.txt presence, and confirm the major AI crawlers can actually reach your pages.