llms.txt explained: what it is, whether you need one, and a copy-paste template
A plain-English guide to the llms.txt file — the AI equivalent of robots.txt — with a ready-to-use template for a business website and the mistakes to avoid.
By Syed Shahzaib Ali · 1 November 2026 · 2 min read
If you have ever looked at a robots.txt file, you already understand llms.txt. Robots.txt tells crawlers where they may go; llms.txt tells large language models what they are looking at. It is a Markdown file at the root of your domain that summarises your site in plain language and links to the pages that matter most.
Why would an AI model need a summary?
When an assistant retrieves your site to answer a question, it has a limited budget of text it can read. A homepage full of navigation, cookie banners and marketing slogans wastes that budget. A clean, factual summary — who you are, what you offer, where, for whom, at what price, how to contact you — lets the model get the facts right first time. That is the whole idea.
What should a business llms.txt contain?
A heading with your business name. A one-paragraph blockquote stating what you are in plain terms. Short sections for services, pricing, locations, key pages and contact, each as a bullet list of links with a one-line description. Keep it under a few hundred words; link out for detail.
A template you can copy
# Acme Dental Clinic
> Acme Dental Clinic is a DHA-licensed dental and orthodontic clinic in Jumeirah, Dubai, founded in 2015, offering general dentistry, Invisalign and implants to adults and children. Consultations are free; treatment from AED 250.
## Services
- [Invisalign](https://acme.ae/invisalign): clear aligners from AED 9,000, free 3D consultation
- [Dental implants](https://acme.ae/implants): single implants from AED 5,500
- [General dentistry](https://acme.ae/general-dentistry): check-ups, hygiene, fillings
## Locations & contact
- Jumeirah Beach Road, Dubai — open Sat–Thu 9am–9pm
- Phone / WhatsApp: +971 4 000 0000 · Email: [email protected]
- [Book online](https://acme.ae/book)
## Key pages
- [About the team](https://acme.ae/about): 6 dentists, licences and specialities
- [Patient reviews](https://acme.ae/reviews): 4.9 on Google from 800+ reviews
- [Arabic version](https://acme.ae/ar/)
Mistakes to avoid
Writing marketing copy instead of facts. Listing prices that differ from your pricing page. Forgetting to update it when services change (an outdated llms.txt is worse than none). Linking to pages that are blocked in robots.txt. And blocking the AI crawlers themselves — llms.txt cannot help if GPTBot or ClaudeBot cannot fetch your site in the first place.
How to publish it
Any host that serves static files will do: upload llms.txt to the web root, or on Next.js create a route handler at app/llms.txt/route.ts that returns text/plain. Then open yourdomain.com/llms.txt in a browser to confirm it loads, and run the free checker to confirm the rest of your AI readiness.
Frequently asked questions
- Is llms.txt an official standard?
- It is a community proposal (from Answer.AI, 2024) that a growing number of sites and tools have adopted. No AI company has formally committed to honouring it, but it is cheap insurance and some retrieval systems already read it.
- Where does llms.txt go?
- At the root of your domain, exactly like robots.txt: https://yourdomain.com/llms.txt, served as text/plain or text/markdown.
- What is the difference between llms.txt and llms-full.txt?
- llms.txt is a short index with a summary and links. llms-full.txt is an optional single file containing your full documentation or content for models that want everything in one request. Most business sites only need llms.txt.
- Will llms.txt improve my Google rankings?
- No — Google has said it does not use it. Its purpose is to help AI assistants and retrieval tools understand your site, which is a different channel from classic search.
Check if your site has llms.txt
Our free AI SEO Checker looks for llms.txt, AI crawler access, structured data and 25 other signals.