The short answer: llms.txt is a proposed text file, at the root of the site, that summarises what the site has and points to its most useful pages, written to be read by AI models. It is not a standard and there is no guarantee that any AI service reads it. Treat it as a cheap experiment, not as a strategy.
Do not confuse it with robots.txt. robots.txt tells crawlers what they may or may not visit. llms.txt neither forbids nor allows anything: it suggests what is worth reading. Neither one forces anybody, because both depend on the crawler respecting them. To decide which AI crawlers you let in, see AI bots crawling your site.
What goes inside
The proposal asks for plain text in Markdown: a title, a short summary, and sections with lists of links, each with a note of a few words. For example:
# Your business name
> One sentence saying what you do and for whom.
## Services
- [Web hosting](https://your-site/services): plans for sites and shops
## Help
- [Frequently asked questions](https://your-site/faq): the most common doubts
How to create and publish it
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Write it in a plain text editor and save it as llms.txt, in UTF-8.
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| 2 |
In the cPanel File Manager, upload it to the main folder of the site, the same one holding robots.txt (usually public_html).
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Check in the browser: open https://yourcompany.com/llms.txt with your own address and see whether it shows the text.
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Update it when your pages change. A file pointing to pages that no longer exist does more harm than good.
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Some WordPress SEO plugins already generate it for you. Check what yours does before switching that option on, and confirm the result by opening the address.
Is it worth it?
| Your situation |
What to think |
| You want to try it with no risk |
Worth it: ten minutes and no cost. |
| You expect to rank higher because of it |
Do not count on it. Nobody guarantees it is read. |
| You have private or unfinished pages |
Do not list them. The file is public and shows everyone what you wrote in it. |
| You want AI to cite your site |
What counts most is clear, current, fast pages, a sitemap and structured data. |
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The file is public. Anyone can open it. Never put private addresses, admin pages or confidential information in it.
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Want help deciding what your site should show to crawlers? Open a ticket and tell us what you are after.
Open a support ticket
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