SEO & AIO/GEO
llms.txt and ai.txt Explained: Should Your Website Have Them?
llms.txt and ai.txt are new, informal files that describe your site to AI systems. They are low-cost to add, but it is important to be honest about what they can and cannot do.
- What llms.txt is
- What ai.txt is
- How robots.txt fits in
- Set expectations
- Best practice
What llms.txt is
A plain-text or Markdown file at your root that summarizes your business, key pages and contact details in a format easy for language models to read.
What ai.txt is
A proposed file for stating how AI systems may use your content. It is not a formal standard and is not enforced.
How robots.txt fits in
robots.txt remains the main control for crawlers, including AI bots such as GPTBot and ClaudeBot, and should reference your sitemap.
Set expectations
No major search engine has confirmed that these files directly boost rankings, so treat them as helpful extras, not magic.
Best practice
Keep the files accurate, list your key pages, and combine them with clean content, schema and fast pages.