If an agency has offered to “set up your llms.txt” as the answer to showing up in AI search, read this before you pay them. I say that as someone who added one to our own site last week.
The short of it: llms.txt is a plain text file that sits at the root of a website and gives AI tools a short, tidy summary of the site and links to its most useful pages. It was proposed in September 2024. As of 2026, none of the big AI companies has said its search tools actually use it, and most sites that have one get no requests for it at all. We added one anyway, because it’s cheap and it made us tidy up our own facts. Just don’t mistake it for an AI search strategy, because it isn’t one.
What llms.txt is
Websites are built for people and browsers. They’re full of menus, scripts, pop-ups, cookie banners and design, and an AI tool has to dig through all of that to find the plain facts about a business.
The llms.txt idea, proposed by Jeremy Howard on 3 September 2024, is a simple Markdown file at yoursite.com/llms.txt that says, in plain text: here’s who we are, here’s what we do, and here are the pages worth reading. Some sites also publish a longer llms-full.txt with the full text of their main pages in one place.
Think of it as a short brochure in plain English, written for software rather than for people. That’s really all it is.
Who actually reads it?
This is the part most agencies skip over, and it’s the part that matters.
Ahrefs looked at this properly in a study they updated in June 2026. Their findings: no major AI provider currently supports llms.txt, about 28% of the 137,000 sites in their sample had one, and 97% of the sites with a valid file got zero requests for it in May 2026. Not few requests. Zero. You can read the whole thing in Ahrefs’ what is llms.txt.
Google’s John Mueller put it bluntly: “AFAIK none of the AI services have said they’re using LLMs.TXT.”
So if anyone tells you an llms.txt file will get you into ChatGPT or Google’s AI answers, ask them for the evidence, and watch what happens.
What we put on our own site anyway
In November 2026 we added these to performancemarketer.com.au:
- /llms.txt: a one-page summary of the business, our services, our case studies with their headline numbers, our guides and how to get in touch.
- /llms-full.txt: the full text of the main pages in one file.
- Markdown copies of each main page, each with a link back to the real page so search engines know which version counts.
- A pointer in robots.txt to all of the above.
- Structured data on the pages themselves, describing the business, its services and its location in a format search engines already read.
It took about a day, and it costs nothing to keep.
Why bother, if nobody reads it?
Three reasons, in order of how much they mattered to me.
It made us fix our own facts. Writing one clean summary of the business showed us how many different numbers were floating around our own website. Different review counts on different pages, different campaign counts, results quoted two ways. AI tools pull facts from everywhere, and conflicting facts make you look less trustworthy to them. Cleaning that up helps no matter who reads the file, and it was slightly embarrassing how much there was to clean.
Some tools do use it. AI coding assistants and the agents that browse websites on someone’s behalf sometimes look for it. That’s a small audience today, but it costs nothing to serve them.
It’s cheap insurance. If one of the big players does start reading it, we’re already there. If they never do, we’ve lost a day.
What actually gets you into AI answers
The things that matter more than llms.txt are mostly the same things that matter for normal search, done properly:
- Pages that answer questions directly. A clear answer in the first few lines, then the detail underneath. AI tools quote what they can lift cleanly, and they skip waffle.
- Consistent facts everywhere. Your name, address, services, prices and results should match across your site, your Google profile and everywhere else you’re listed.
- Being mentioned by other people. Reviews, directories, local news, industry sites. AI answers lean heavily on what others say about you, not on what you say about yourself.
- Pages that work without heavy code. If your content only appears after a pile of scripts load, some AI crawlers will never see it.
- Proof. Real case studies with real numbers give an AI tool something specific to say about you, instead of “a marketing agency in Melbourne”.
We go deeper on all of this in how to rank in AI Overviews and why your SEO won’t work for AI search, and what will.
Should your business have one?
If someone can add it in an hour, sure. It does no harm, and you might tidy a few facts along the way like we did.
If you’re being charged real money for it, or it’s being sold to you as your AI search plan, no. Spend that money and that time on the five things above instead.
Questions people ask me about llms.txt
Does llms.txt help SEO?
Not for Google’s normal search results. Google’s John Mueller has said it isn’t for search, and nothing we’ve seen suggests otherwise.
Is llms.txt the same as robots.txt?
No. Robots.txt tells crawlers what they’re allowed to visit. llms.txt is a summary of what’s worth reading once they get there. They do different jobs, and you should have both.
Does ChatGPT read llms.txt?
OpenAI hasn’t said that it does. Its crawler follows robots.txt like everyone else’s, and that’s the file you should make sure is right.
What should go in an llms.txt file?
Your business name and a one-paragraph summary, then links to your main services, your proof and your contact page, each with a line explaining what’s there. Keep it short. Ours is a working example if you want one: performancemarketer.com.au/llms.txt.
Want to show up where your customers are asking questions?
Book a call with me. We’ll look at what AI tools and Google say about your business today, which is often a surprise, and I’ll tell you what I’d fix first. It’s part of how we approach SEO now.
