llms.txt

Definitionllms.txt is a proposed Markdown file at the root of a website (/llms.txt) that gives AI tools a short summary of the site and a list of its key pages.

It was proposed by Jeremy Howard of Answer.AI in September 2024 (llmstxt.org (opens in a new tab)). The only required part is an H1 with the site's name; a summary blockquote and H2 sections of links follow. It is a community proposal, not a standard.

Google says you don't need llms.txt or any other AI text file to appear in its AI features, because Google Search doesn't use them. It can help tools that are pointed at it directly. AI Rank Lab's LLMs.txt generator builds a file in the proposed format, and the AEO and GEO checker validates an existing one; a valid file is well formed, not a guarantee of citations.

Learn it step by step

• Structured data and llms.txt: what they do and don't do (AEO and GEO fundamentals)
• Generate llms.txt (Schema and AI files)

Related terms

• Structured data: Structured data is code on a page that states facts in a standard vocabulary (schema.org), so machines can read details like a product's price or an article's author without guessing.
• robots.txt: robots.txt is a text file at the root of your site that tells crawlers which paths they may or may not fetch, rule by rule for each user agent.
• XML sitemap: An XML sitemap is a file that lists the URLs on your site you want search engines to discover and crawl, optionally with the date each was last changed.