Guides / Product data and technical SEO
Do you need an llms.txt file?
SHORT ANSWER
Not to rank. llms.txt is a proposed plain-text summary of your site for AI tools, not a standard. Google's guidance on its AI features says no special optimization is needed beyond foundational SEO and does not mention it. It is cheap to add and keeps your business facts tidy, but do not expect it to change rankings or recommendations.
An llms.txt file is a plain-text page at the root of your site, such as yourdomain.com/llms.txt, that summarises what the business does and links to the most useful pages in an easy-to-read format. It is a proposed convention, not a standard that every search engine or assistant follows.
What Google says
Google's guidance on how its AI features work says you need no special optimization beyond foundational SEO. The page does not mention llms.txt. So you should not expect an llms.txt file to change how you appear in Google's AI features.
Why some sites publish one anyway
- It costs little: one file, written once and kept up to date.
- It forces you to write your business facts plainly: what you do, who for, where, and which pages matter.
- Some AI tools and developers may read it. We cannot promise any particular assistant does, so we do not claim it improves results.
What matters more
- Pages that can be crawled and indexed, and robots.txt that does not block the search bots you want.
- Clear, correct service and product pages that answer buyer questions.
- Structured data that matches the text visible on the page, as Google advises.
- The same business facts on every profile and directory about you.
Our view
We publish an llms.txt file on this site because it is cheap and keeps our facts tidy, not because we can show that it earns recommendations. If an agency sells llms.txt as the way to get into ChatGPT, ask for evidence.
Common questions
Does ChatGPT read llms.txt?
We cannot point to documentation from OpenAI saying ChatGPT uses it, so we do not claim it does. What OpenAI does document is its crawlers and how to allow them in robots.txt.
What should I do instead?
Make sure search and AI crawlers can reach your pages, answer buyer questions clearly on the page, add structured data that matches the page, and keep your business facts the same everywhere.
Sources
Free tools: AI crawler checker · llms.txt generator · robots.txt AI rules generator