25 September 2026
When an AI assistant visits a website, it has to guess what matters among menus, cookie banners, footers and images. llms.txt saves it the trouble: it's a simple file at the root of the site that says, in a few lines, what the business is, where it is and which pages are worth reading.
Where it comes from
The proposal appeared in 2024 and is described at llmstxt.org. It isn't an official standard yet, and not every assistant reads it. But it's the AI equivalent of what robots.txt and sitemap.xml are for search engines, and it has no downside: if the assistant doesn't read it, nothing changes.
What it should include
- A title with the business name, starting with
#. - A one-sentence summary, starting with
>: what you do, where and for whom. - The key details: address, phone, opening hours and what sets you apart (specialities, plans you accept, brands you work with).
- The pages that matter, each with its link and a sentence explaining what's on it.
An example for a dental clinic:
# Example Dental Clinic
> Dental clinic in Bristol city centre, offering general dentistry, orthodontics, implants and hygiene appointments.
- Address: 10 Example Street, Bristol BS1 1AA
- Phone: +44 117 000 0000
- Opening hours: Monday to Friday, 9am to 7pm; Saturday, 9am to 1pm
- Plans: NHS and private patients, Denplan
## Pages
- [Treatments](https://www.exampledental.co.uk/treatments): what we do and what a first appointment costs
- [Team](https://www.exampledental.co.uk/team): our dentists and their specialities
- [Contact](https://www.exampledental.co.uk/contact): how to book and where to parkHow to add it to your site
The file is called llms.txt and sits at the root of the site, so it opens at www.yourbusiness.com/llms.txt. How you add it depends on how the site was built:
- WordPress: there are plugins that create the file. You can also upload it by FTP or through your hosting's file manager.
- Wix, Squarespace and similar: not all of them let you add files at the root. It's worth asking their support, or whoever manages your site.
- Custom-built site: just send the text to whoever manages it; it takes minutes.
Once it's live, open the address in your browser and check that you see the text, not an error page or the home page.
Common mistakes
- Copying the whole website. The point is to summarise; five to fifteen lines is enough.
- Leaving out the city. For a local business, it's the most important detail for showing up in the right questions.
- Letting it go out of date. Old opening hours or an old phone number in
llms.txtcontradict your website and your Google profile, and AI starts trusting both less.
Is it enough to show up in answers?
On its own, no. llms.txt helps AI understand the business, but whether it recommends you also depends on your site letting assistants in, on the schema.org markup, on reviews and on what's said about the business elsewhere. The guide How to show up in ChatGPT answers has the six steps in order of impact.
The free Chatlisted scan checks whether your site already has llms.txt, along with the other technical checks, and shows whether AI recommends your business.