What is llms.txt and does your website need it?

What llms.txt is

llms.txt is a plain text file in Markdown format that lives at the root of a website, for example https://example.com/llms.txt. According to the proposal on llmstxt.org, its purpose is to give language models a concise, LLM-friendly overview of the site, so they do not have to process full HTML pages with menus, scripts and ads.

The proposal was published by Jeremy Howard in September 2024.

How the file is structured

The llmstxt.org specification describes the format like this:

1. An H1 heading with the name of the site or project — the only required section.
2. A blockquote with a short summary — optional.
3. Free text with details — optional.
4. Sections under H2 headings with lists of links to important pages and a short note for each link — optional.

The proposal also suggests publishing clean Markdown versions of pages (for example, page.html.md) so that models can read them without HTML.

What Google says

• Official documentation. Google Search Central states that you do not need to create new machine-readable files, AI text files or markup to appear in AI Overviews and AI Mode.
• John Mueller, Google. In April 2025 he wrote on Reddit that, as far as he knows, none of the AI services have said they use llms.txt, and that server logs show they do not even check for it; he compared it to the keywords meta tag.

Who publishes llms.txt

According to llmstxt.org, OpenAI, Anthropic and Google Gemini publish llms.txt files for their own developer documentation, and several documentation platforms generate the file automatically. Publishing a file for your own docs is not the same as using other sites’ files when answering users: we have not found an official statement from OpenAI, Google, Anthropic or Microsoft that their AI search reads llms.txt of third-party websites.

Should your website have llms.txt?

Our view at JW2D:

• It does not hurt. The file takes an hour to make and is a convenient one-page summary of the company: what you do, prices, contacts, key pages.
• It is not a priority. Indexing in Google and Bing, consistent company facts, clear answers on the site and independent mentions matter much more for visibility in AI answers.
• Keep it in sync. If you publish llms.txt, the facts in it must match the website. Contradictory data is worse than no file.

We publish llms.txt on jw2d.com as well, but we treat it as a tidy business card for machines, not as a ranking tool.

How to create llms.txt

1. Create a text file named llms.txt.
2. Start with # Company name and a one-paragraph summary in a blockquote (>).
3. Add sections such as ## Services and ## Main pages with links in the form - [Page name](URL): short description.
4. Upload it to the root of the website so that it opens at /llms.txt.
5. Update it whenever prices, services or contacts change.