As more people ask AI assistants for recommendations, website owners want to know how to help those assistants understand their business. One idea that has spread quickly is a file called llms.txt.
What it is
llms.txt is a proposed convention: a plain-text Markdown file at yourdomain.com/llms.txt that tells large language models what your site is about and where the important content lives. Think of it as a short, curated table of contents written for machines.
What goes in it
- A title and one-paragraph summary of your business.
- Key facts: what you do, who for, where, and how to contact you.
- Links to your most important pages, each with a one-line description.
- Optionally, a link to a longer
llms-full.txtcontaining the main content as plain text.
You can see ours at delimetree.com/llms.txt.
What it does — and doesn’t — do
It helps AI tools that choose to read it get an accurate, concise picture of your business without parsing complex pages.
It doesn’t guarantee that any assistant will read it, and it is not a ranking signal for Google. On its own it will not make ChatGPT recommend you.
What matters more
- Pages that answer real questions clearly in their first paragraph.
- Structured data describing your organisation, services and products.
- Consistent business details across your site and profiles.
- Independent mentions: directories, reviews, partners, press.
- Letting AI crawlers access your site in
robots.txt.
Should you add one?
Yes — it takes under an hour and has no downside. Just treat it as one small part of being easy for AI to understand, not a shortcut. More in our guide to getting recommended by ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity, or request a free AI visibility check.