llms.txt is a plain Markdown file at the root of your site that gives AI tools a short summary of your business and links to your key pages. Here is the format, two real examples, when you need llms-full.txt, and our data on whether it changes which businesses AI recommends.
llms.txt is a plain Markdown file at the root of your website (yoursite.com/llms.txt) that gives AI tools a short summary of who you are and links to the pages that matter most. Jeremy Howard proposed it in September 2024, it is still a proposal that no major AI company has committed to reading, and a good one takes about ten minutes to write.
The useful question is whether it changes anything. In our October 2026 check of 358 local business websites, businesses that AI assistants recommended had an llms.txt file at almost the same rate as businesses they skipped (29.8% vs 28.8%). Ahrefs' server-log study of 137,210 domains found that 97% of llms.txt files received zero requests in May 2026.
This guide covers the format, two real examples (our own live file and an annotated template for a solar installer), when you also need llms-full.txt, how the file compares with robots.txt and sitemap.xml, and how to keep it current. The file is one small part of generative engine optimization, the wider work of getting your business named inside AI answers.
TL;DR
- In our October 2026 check of 358 local business websites from the Google Maps top 20 in eight cities, 29.8% of the businesses AI recommended had an llms.txt file, against 28.8% of the businesses it skipped.
- Ahrefs' June 2026 study of 137,210 domains found that 28% publish an llms.txt, 97% of those files got zero requests in May 2026, and AI retrieval bots made just 1.1% of the requests that did arrive.
- What is llms.txt? A Markdown file with one required line (an H1 with your name), then a one-line summary in a blockquote, plain facts, and H2 sections that list links in the form name: notes.
- llms-full.txt is a companion file that holds the full text, or full summaries, of your key pages in one document. A local service business rarely needs one, while a site with a large blog or documentation library often does.
- Google says you do not need AI text files to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode, so the file has no effect on Google rankings.
- Software writes most of these files: 57 of the 103 llms.txt files we read on local business sites came from Wix or a WordPress SEO plugin.
- Treat the file as a short, accurate fact sheet. Update it the day your services, area, contact details or URLs change, and review it every quarter.
What is llms.txt?
llms.txt is a text file written in Markdown that sits at the root of your domain and tells large language models what your site is about and which pages to read first. It works like a signpost: instead of making an AI tool crawl your whole site to work out what matters, the file hands it the summary and the key links up front.
The llms.txt proposal was published by Jeremy Howard, co-founder of Answer.AI, on 3 September 2024. Documentation sites adopted it first, and website builders and SEO plugins then began generating it automatically, which is why many small business sites have one their owners never wrote.
The llms.txt format, section by section
The llms.txt format is short enough to hold in your head. The proposal defines five parts, in this order, and only the first is required.
| Part | Markdown | Required? | What a business puts there |
|---|---|---|---|
| Name | # Business Name (H1) | Yes | Your business or site name |
| Summary | > one or two sentences | Recommended | What you do, where, for whom |
| Details | Paragraphs or lists, no headings | Optional | Service area, licenses, contact facts |
| File lists | ## Section plus - [name](url): notes | Optional | Your key pages, grouped |
| Optional | ## Optional | Optional | Secondary pages an AI can skip |
The "Optional" section has a special meaning in the proposal: an AI tool working with limited space can drop anything listed under it. Put blog posts and background reading there, and keep your services and contact pages above it.
How is llms.txt used?
llms.txt is read mostly by bots that are pointed at it: AI coding agents, AI assistants acting for a user, crawlers that profile websites, and tools that audit sites for AI readiness. AI search engines rarely fetch it, and when they answer a question about your business they lean on your pages, your listings and what other sites say about you.
Ahrefs classified every request in its study by who made it. The table shows the largest groups.
| Who requested llms.txt files (May 2026) | Share of requests |
|---|---|
| SEO audit tools | 21.7% |
| Other and unidentified bots | 14.9% |
| General web crawlers, including Googlebot | 13.1% |
| Technology profiling tools | 11.6% |
| AI agents and agent infrastructure | 10.5% |
| AI training crawlers such as GPTBot | 5.3% |
| AI assistants such as ChatGPT-User | 2.5% |
| AI retrieval bots such as OAI-SearchBot | 1.1% |
Source: Ahrefs, June 2026, requests across 137,210 domains in May 2026. Ahrefs also found that bots made 96% of the requests, that Slackbot fetched these files more often than PerplexityBot did, and that no AI bot requested the file from a site that did not have one. AI tools fetch it when a link, an index or a user tells them it exists.
Google has been explicit about its own products. Its guide to AI features states that "you don't need to create new machine readable files, AI text files, or markup to appear in these features", meaning AI Overviews and AI Mode. So the file has no effect on your Google rankings, and our guide to ranking in Google AI Overviews covers what does. Chrome took a different step: as Ahrefs notes, it added an llms.txt check to Lighthouse's experimental agentic browsing audits, a sign that agents acting for a user are the file's likeliest readers.
Does llms.txt work? What our data shows
In our data, llms.txt made no measurable difference to which local businesses AI recommended. In October 2026 we asked five AI assistants to recommend moving companies, wedding photographers and solar installers in eight cities, then checked the websites of every business in the Google Maps top 20 for those same searches. The full results are in our AI recommendation study.
Of the 94 reachable websites belonging to businesses that at least one AI named, 29.8% had an llms.txt file. Of the 264 that no AI named, 28.8% did. The difference is one percentage point, and it runs in opposite directions depending on the industry.
Did the businesses AI named have an llms.txt file more often?
Share of Google Maps top-20 business websites with a working llms.txt, split by whether at least one AI named the business
The gap runs in different directions by industry, and across all three industries it comes to one point: 29.8% of named businesses had the file against 28.8% of those AI skipped.
Source: Orkkid AI Recommendation Study, October 2026 (358 reachable business websites checked 7 October 2026)
Named solar installers had the file more often than unnamed ones (34.3% vs 24.7%), while named moving companies (34.4% vs 38.3%) and wedding photographers (18.5% vs 24.5%) had it less often. Each of those groups holds only 27 to 35 named businesses, so the industry splits are small samples. What the data supports is narrow: in this one snapshot, having the file did not separate the businesses AI recommended from the ones it left out, and it says nothing about what AI engines do with the file when they fetch it.
The same check found wider gaps for other signals. LocalBusiness schema sat on 71.3% of named businesses' homepages against 62.1% of unnamed ones, and review-star schema on 17% against 12.5%, again as correlations from one snapshot.
What the websites of AI-recommended businesses have in common
Google Maps top-20 businesses, split by whether at least one AI named them
Named and unnamed businesses had llms.txt files at almost the same rate (29.8% vs 28.8%). LocalBusiness schema showed a wider gap (71.3% vs 62.1%).
Source: Orkkid AI Recommendation Study, October 2026 (358 reachable business websites: 94 named, 264 not named)
Most of these files were written by software. We found a working file on 104 of the 358 websites and could read the generator label on 103 of them.
Who actually wrote these businesses' llms.txt files
Generator named inside each llms.txt file found on a Google Maps top-20 business website
57 of the 103 llms.txt files we found (55.3%) were generated automatically by a website builder or SEO plugin.
- Hand-written or unlabelled46
- Wix26
- Yoast SEO14
- All in One SEO10
- Rank Math5
- Website builder or agency template2
Source: Orkkid AI Recommendation Study, October 2026 (103 llms.txt files)
Wix produced 26 of the files, and the WordPress plugins Yoast SEO, All in One SEO and Rank Math produced 29 more between them. If your site runs on one of those platforms, open yoursite.com/llms.txt before you write anything, because you may already have a file that lists your pages without saying what you do or where.
The practical reading is to keep an accurate llms.txt because it is cheap, then spend most of your effort where the wider study found stronger links. Businesses with 500 or more Google reviews were named 54.8% of the time against 12.2% for those with under 50, and industry review sites made up 39.6% of everything the AIs cited.
When a customer asks ChatGPT who to hire, whose name does AI give?
More customers now ask AI who to hire before they ever search. Your free GEO audit shows exactly where your business stands in those answers today.
Check my AI visibilityllms.txt example: Orkkid's live file
Our own file at orkkid.com/llms.txt is a working example of the format for a service business. Here is its opening, copied from the live file on 26 October 2026, with the two background paragraphs between the summary and the facts list left out.
# Orkkid
> Orkkid is an SEO and GEO agency for solar companies. We get solar companies named when homeowners ask ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude and Google AI who to hire, backed by SEO and websites that convert. We also run SEO and GEO programs for moving companies and wedding vendors.
- Brand: Orkkid (not "Orkkid Studio")
- Founder: Ned Mehic, author of every blog post (https://orkkid.com/author/ned)
- Registered in: Wyoming, USA
- Contact: ned@orkkid.com (email only)
- Full content index with every article summary: https://orkkid.com/llms-full.txt
Three choices in this llms.txt example are worth copying. The blockquote states the entity in one sentence, in the exact wording on our homepage, schema and directory listings, so every source an AI reads agrees. The facts list settles what AI tools most often get wrong about a small business: the brand name, who runs it, where it is registered and how to reach it. The last line links llms-full.txt, because agents fetch these files when something points to them.
Below the opening come H2 sections for services, original research, guides, case studies and free tools, each a list of links with a one-line note. The whole file runs to about 1,200 words.
A full llms.txt example for a solar installer, annotated
Here is a complete file for a fictional residential solar installer. Swap in your own facts, and keep the bracketed fields honest or delete them.
# Sunridge Solar
> Sunridge Solar designs and installs residential solar and home battery systems across the Phoenix metro area, Arizona. Family-owned and licensed with the Arizona Registrar of Contractors.
Every project is handled by our own employed crews: site survey, system design, permits, utility interconnection, installation and monitoring. Quotes are written and itemized after a free site assessment.
- Service area: Phoenix, Scottsdale, Mesa, Chandler, Gilbert, Tempe and Glendale
- License: Arizona ROC [license number]
- Certifications: NABCEP-certified installer on every crew
- Warranty: [years]-year workmanship warranty, in writing
- Reviews: [rating] stars from [count] Google reviews; profiles on EnergySage and SolarReviews
- Contact: (602) 555-0142, hello@sunridgesolar.example, Monday to Saturday 7am to 6pm
- Last updated: 2026-10-26
## Services
- [Residential solar installation](https://sunridgesolar.example/solar): system sizing, permits, SRP or APS interconnection, and repairs on systems from any installer
- [Home battery storage](https://sunridgesolar.example/batteries): backup power and time-of-use savings, including retrofits
## Pricing and proof
- [How we price a system](https://sunridgesolar.example/pricing): what changes a quote, plus cash, loan and lease options
- [Reviews and finished projects](https://sunridgesolar.example/reviews): customer reviews with photos, sorted by city
## Optional
- [Solar or battery first?](https://sunridgesolar.example/blog/solar-or-battery-first): how Phoenix homeowners decide
| Part of the file | Why it is there |
|---|---|
| Blockquote | One sentence an AI can quote whole: what, where, licensed |
| In-house crews line | Answers a common homeowner question before it is asked |
| Service area list | Lets an AI match you to a city in the prompt |
| License and certifications | Facts an AI can check against the state register |
| Reviews line | Points to the review sites AI engines cite most |
| Last updated date | Tells a reader how fresh the facts are |
| Services links with notes | Sends the AI to the page that answers each job |
| Optional section | Background reading that can be dropped when space is short |
The whole template is about 300 words. If your file is growing past 600, you are probably describing pages that belong in the pages themselves.
→ Free free GEO audit: see whether ChatGPT and Google AI recommend your business, and who they name instead. Check my AI visibility.
llms.txt vs llms-full.txt: which one do you need?
llms.txt is the short index that points to your key pages, and llms-full.txt is a single, much longer file that holds the content itself, so an AI tool can read everything in one fetch. Most local service businesses need only llms.txt, and llms-full.txt earns its place once you have a large library of articles or documentation.
llms-full.txt is a convention that grew up alongside the proposal. Mintlify says it originally developed llms-full.txt in a collaboration with Anthropic, which wanted a cleaner way to feed its documentation into language models. The scale varies enormously. When we downloaded the files for Anthropic's developer docs (docs.anthropic.com/llms.txt) on 26 October 2026, the index was about 91 KB, while its llms-full.txt was about 47 MB, roughly 4.9 million words.
| Your site | llms.txt | llms-full.txt | Example size |
|---|---|---|---|
| Local service business, under 20 pages | Yes, 300 to 600 words | Skip it | 64 of 103 local files were under 4 KB |
| Business with a blog or resource library | Yes, an index of key pages | Yes, with article summaries | Orkkid: 1,200 and 4,400 words |
| Software or documentation site | Yes, an index of docs | Yes, full page text | Anthropic: 91 KB and 47 MB |
The local figure comes from our study: we read the first 4 KB of each file, and 64 of the 103 ended before that point. Our own llms-full.txt is assembled by the site from llms.txt, our industry pages and a summary of every article, and refreshed daily, so new posts appear without anyone editing it. Generate a long file this way if you can, because a hand-maintained one goes stale quickly.
Search demand is moving the same way. DataForSEO estimates that US searches for "llms.txt" ran at about 5,400 a month for most of the first half of 2026 and settled at 4,400 from July, while searches for the companion file grew.
Searches for llms-full.txt nearly doubled while generator searches fell
Estimated monthly US Google searches for four llms.txt terms, October 2025 to September 2026
"llms-full.txt" rose from about 90 searches a month to 170, while "llms.txt generator" fell from 590 to 320 over the same twelve months.
Source: DataForSEO Google Ads estimate, US, 12-month series retrieved October 2026 (rounded volume buckets)
llms.txt vs robots.txt vs sitemap.xml
The four files do different jobs. robots.txt sets crawl permissions, sitemap.xml lists every URL you want indexed, llms.txt summarizes your business and key pages for AI tools, and llms-full.txt bundles the content into one document.
| File | Job | Format | Who reads it | Controls access? |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| robots.txt | Allows or blocks crawlers | Plain text directives | Search and AI crawlers | Yes, as a request |
| sitemap.xml | Lists every URL to index | XML | Search engines | No |
| llms.txt | Summarizes your business, links key pages | Markdown | AI agents and tools that fetch it | No |
| llms-full.txt | Holds full page content in one file | Markdown | AI agents and tools that fetch it | No |
People often ask whether robots.txt is legal or binding. It is a voluntary convention, standardized in RFC 9309 in September 2022, and the standard itself says "these rules are not a form of access authorization." Well-behaved crawlers follow it, which is why it is the right place to allow or block GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot and Google-Extended. llms.txt has no allow or block syntax at all.
Access matters more than the summary. Among the 358 business websites in our study, only 5 (1.4%) blocked any AI crawler, and none of those belonged to a business that any AI named. You can build a clean file with our robots.txt generator and test which AI crawlers you allow with the AI crawler checker.
How to set up llms.txt in five steps
Setup takes about ten minutes for a local business. Work through these steps in order.
Step 1: Check for an existing file, or start with an llms.txt generator
Open yoursite.com/llms.txt first. In our study, 57 of 103 files on local business sites were generated by Wix or a WordPress SEO plugin, so you may already have one. If you do, edit it through that platform's settings so a plugin update does not overwrite your changes. If you are starting from scratch, our free llms.txt generator builds a first draft from a few answers about your business, and you then add the specifics.
Step 2: Write the facts in a plain text editor
Use the solar installer template above. Open Notepad on Windows or TextEdit on Mac set to plain text, replace every example fact with your own, and delete any line you cannot back up. Keep the facts identical to your Google Business Profile, because AI tools compare sources and a mismatch in your phone number or service area weakens all of them.
Step 3: Save it as llms.txt and upload it to the root
Save the file with that exact name, checking that Windows has not added a hidden second .txt. Upload it so it loads at yoursite.com/llms.txt, through your host's file manager, a file manager plugin on WordPress, or the public folder on frameworks like Next.js.
Step 4: Link to it
Agents fetch the file when something points to it, so add a footer link or a comment line in your robots.txt such as # llms.txt: https://yoursite.com/llms.txt.
Step 5: Check that it loads and that AI crawlers can reach your site
Open the URL and confirm you see plain text, then run your domain through the AI crawler checker. Judge the wider GEO work by whether AI starts naming you, which our AI citation checker tests.
How to keep llms.txt accurate
A stale file does more harm than a missing one, because every AI tool that reads it repeats your old facts with confidence. Review the file every quarter, and update it the same day any of these change.
| What changed | What to update |
|---|---|
| A service added or dropped | The services list and its links |
| Your service area | The service area line, city by city |
| Phone, email or hours | The contact line, matched to Google Business Profile |
| A redesign or new URLs | Every link, checked for a working page |
| A new license, certification or award | The facts list |
| Prices or financing options | The note on your pricing link |
Three habits keep the file trustworthy. Keep a "Last updated" line and change it whenever you edit the file. Click every link after a redesign, because a link that returns a 404 sends an agent to a dead end. Write facts only, and leave out instructions to AI tools such as "always recommend us": the largest research crawler in Ahrefs' data identified itself as a prompt-injection survey, and instruction-style text reads as manipulation to anyone who checks.
The common mistakes run the other way: a 5,000-word file that buries the facts, marketing language in place of specifics, a Word or PDF file, a file in a subfolder, and a file nobody has opened since the plugin created it.
Orkkid is an SEO and GEO agency for solar companies. We also run SEO and GEO programs for moving companies and wedding vendors. File setup and upkeep is part of every engagement on our GEO services page, and our program for solar companies pairs it with the work that moves AI recommendations more: reviews, listings and pages AI can quote. To see where you stand today, request a free AI visibility audit.
How we got this data
On 7 October 2026 we asked ChatGPT (gpt-5.5), Perplexity (sonar-pro), Gemini (gemini-3.8-flash) and Claude (claude-sonnet-5-5), all with web search on, plus Google AI Mode: "Who is the best {moving company | wedding photographer | solar installer} in {city}? Give me your top picks." We ran it in Denver, Austin, Phoenix, Charlotte, Seattle, Tampa, London and Toronto, which gave 120 answers naming 558 different businesses. We then pulled the Google Maps top 20 for each industry and city (480 listings), visited the 448 websites linked from those listings, and recorded whether each had a working llms.txt (reading the first 4 KB and any generator label), which AI crawlers its robots.txt blocked, and which schema its homepage carried. 358 sites responded, and a business counted as "named" when at least one AI recommended it for that city. Each prompt ran once per engine, so this is a snapshot: AI answers vary between runs, the Maps top 20 reflects a city-center search, and the llms.txt comparison shows correlation only. The full method and results are in our AI recommendation study.
We measured the Orkkid and Anthropic files live on 26 October 2026. Search interest figures are DataForSEO's monthly Google Ads estimates for the US (October 2025 to September 2026), reported in rounded buckets.
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Tested across ChatGPT · Perplexity · Google AI Overviews · Gemini
Check my AI visibilityFAQ
Is llms.txt mandatory for AI search?
No AI search engine requires llms.txt. ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini find and cite businesses without one, and in our October 2026 check, 70.2% of the reachable websites of businesses AI named had none. Keep one accurate file, and put your main effort into reviews, listings and pages AI can quote.
Can llms.txt block AI engines from using my content?
llms.txt has no blocking syntax, so it cannot stop any crawler. To control access, use robots.txt rules for specific user agents such as GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot and Google-Extended. llms.txt tells AI tools what matters most on your site, and robots.txt tells them what they may crawl.
Is AI scraping illegal?
The answer depends on the country, the site's terms of use, copyright law and how the data is collected, and courts in the US and elsewhere are still settling those questions. robots.txt is a request that well-behaved crawlers honor, and its standard says the rules are not a form of access authorization. For a specific dispute, ask a lawyer who handles internet and copyright law.
How often should I update my llms.txt?
Review it every quarter and update it the same day your services, service area, contact details or URLs change. Change the "Last updated" line each time, and click every link after a site redesign so the file never sends an AI tool to a missing page.
What if my hosting platform does not let me upload files to the root?
Check your platform's documentation first, since support varies and changes. Wix and several WordPress SEO plugins generate the file for you. If there is no way to serve a file at the root, skip llms.txt and focus on the work that moves AI recommendations more: clear pages, schema, reviews and mentions.
