What Is llms.txt?
llms.txt is a plain text file, placed at the root of a website, that gives AI models a short, structured summary of what the site is and which pages matter most. It works like a robots.txt file, except instead of telling crawlers what they cannot access, it is a curated guide to what is worth reading.
Why it exists
AI models have a hard limit on how much text they can read at once, and a real website has far more content than that. llms.txt gives a model a shortcut: a small, hand picked file that says here is who we are, here is what we do, and here are links to the pages that explain it best. Instead of guessing which pages matter by crawling the whole site, the model can start from a clean summary.
What is typically in one
- A short description of the company or product
- A list of links to the most important pages, each with a one line explanation
- Sometimes a separate llms-full.txt with more detail for models that can handle longer input
Does it actually help
It is still early, and not every AI provider confirms it uses llms.txt files. But publishing one costs almost nothing, cannot hurt, and gives you a place to describe your product in plain terms instead of hoping a model correctly infers it from marketing copy. Given how cheap it is to add, most sites that care about AI visibility publish one anyway.
Checking or generating your own
You can see whether a site already has one with QueryTrace's free llms.txt checker, or generate one for your own site based on your actual pages with the llms.txt generator.
See where you stand
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