What Is llms.txt, and Does It Help You Show Up in ChatGPT?
If you have read anything about getting your business recommended by AI assistants this year, you have probably seen the advice to "add an llms.txt file." Some guides present it as the robots.txt of the AI era. Others call it useless. The truth sits in between, and it is worth five minutes to understand, because the file is cheap to add and easy to get wrong.
What Is llms.txt?
llms.txt is a plain text file, written in Markdown, that sits at the root of your website (yoursite.com/llms.txt). It gives a large language model a short, clean summary of who you are and points it to your most useful pages.
The idea was proposed in September 2024 by Jeremy Howard of Answer.AI. The reasoning is simple: a website is built for humans, with menus, cookie banners, scripts and layout. A language model reading your site has to dig through all of that to find what matters. llms.txt hands it the essentials directly.
What Goes in an llms.txt File?
The proposed format is short and strict:
- A title: your company or site name, as a level-one heading.
- A one-paragraph summary: what you do, for whom, and where, in plain words.
- Sections of links: your key pages (services, pricing, guides, about), each with a one-line description.
- An optional section: links that are useful but can be skipped when the reader has limited space.
Here is a minimal example for a local business:
# Dupont Tree Care
> Tree pruning, felling and stump removal for homes and businesses
> in Montélimar and the Drôme. Fully insured, free quotes within 48 hours.
## Services
- [Tree pruning](https://example.com/pruning): seasonal and corrective pruning
- [Tree felling](https://example.com/felling): including difficult and close-to-house trees
## Company
- [About us](https://example.com/about): family business since 2009
- [Contact and quotes](https://example.com/contact)
Some sites also publish llms-full.txt, a longer version containing the full text of their key pages in one file.
Do ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity Actually Read llms.txt?
This is the part most guides skip. At the time of writing, none of the major assistant makers (OpenAI, Google, Anthropic, Perplexity) has publicly confirmed that its systems use llms.txt to decide what to say about a business or which sources to cite. Google representatives have said publicly that Google Search does not use it.
Where llms.txt is clearly used today is in developer documentation: many documentation platforms generate it automatically, and coding assistants can be pointed at it to load a product's docs.
So the honest answer: llms.txt is a low-cost bet, not a ranking lever. It cannot hurt, it takes an hour, and if assistants start relying on it more, you will already have it. But it will not, on its own, make ChatGPT recommend you.
What Matters More Than llms.txt for AI Visibility?
If your goal is to be named when a buyer asks an assistant for a recommendation, these come first:
- AI crawlers can read your site. Check that your robots.txt does not block GPTBot, OAI-SearchBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot or Google-Extended. A blocked crawler cannot cite you, whatever your llms.txt says.
- Your content is readable without JavaScript. Many AI crawlers do not run scripts. If your services page is assembled in the browser, they may see an empty page.
- Other websites talk about you. Assistants lean heavily on third-party pages: directories, reviews, "best of" lists, local press. Being listed there often matters more than anything on your own site.
- Your pages answer the questions buyers ask. "Who is the best tree surgeon in Montélimar?" is answered from pages that clearly say what you do and where.
We explain the bigger picture in What Is Generative Engine Optimization, and How Is It Different From SEO?.
How to Create Your llms.txt in Practice
- List your 5 to 15 most useful pages: what you sell, where, prices, proof (reviews, case studies), contact.
- Write a two-sentence summary a stranger could repeat accurately.
- Save it as llms.txt at the root of your domain, so it opens at yoursite.com/llms.txt.
- Do not invent anything. Only link pages that exist, and describe them as they are. An assistant that finds a claim it cannot verify will ignore it.
- Update it when your offer changes, the same day you update the site.
Most website builders let you upload a file to the root. If yours does not, ask your web developer: it is a five-minute job.
How Do You Know If It Worked?
You measure what assistants say, before and after. Ask ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude and Perplexity the questions your customers ask, and note whether you are named, in what position, and which sources they cite.
Doing that by hand once is a good start. Doing it every week is where a tool helps: Operato AI asks those questions every week across the main assistants, shows who gets recommended instead of you, and generates a ready-to-use llms.txt and robots.txt fix from an audit of your own site. You can start with the free AI Readiness Score, which checks whether AI crawlers can read your site, or start a 14-day free trial.
FAQ
What is llms.txt? llms.txt is a Markdown file at the root of a website that gives large language models a short summary of the site and links to its most important pages. It was proposed in September 2024 by Jeremy Howard of Answer.AI.
Does ChatGPT use llms.txt? At the time of writing, OpenAI has not publicly confirmed that ChatGPT uses llms.txt to choose what to say or cite. It is a low-cost addition, not a guaranteed way to be recommended.
Is llms.txt the same as robots.txt? No. robots.txt tells crawlers what they may or may not access. llms.txt is a summary and reading list for language models. Blocking an AI crawler in robots.txt matters far more than having or not having an llms.txt.
Where do I put my llms.txt file? At the root of your domain, so it opens at yoursite.com/llms.txt, the same place as robots.txt.
What is llms-full.txt? An optional, longer companion file that contains the full text of your key pages in one document, for tools that want everything at once.
Will llms.txt improve my Google rankings? No. Google has said publicly that its search does not use llms.txt.