Is llms.txt Worth Adding to Your Site?

If you've read about AI and websites lately, you've probably met llms.txt, or a site builder offering to make one for you. My post on AI visitors gave it one paragraph. This is the longer answer to the question "should my site have one?", built only from what the people involved say themselves.

What llms.txt is

Jeremy Howard published the proposal at llmstxt.org on September 3, 2024, and revised it as version 2 in August 2026 (llmstxt.org). It's a proposal, open for community input, not a rule any browser or search engine has to follow.

The file is Markdown, the plain-text format that uses # for headings and dashes for lists. It sits at yoursite.com/llms.txt, or inside a folder to cover just the pages there. The proposal sets its order:

• a top heading with the site's name, the only required part;
• a short summary in a quote block (a line starting with >);
• optional notes, in paragraphs or lists;
• sections under smaller headings, each a list of links with an optional note after a colon.

By convention, a section called "Optional" holds links an AI tool can skip when it's short on room. Version 2 also proposes clean Markdown copies of your pages, at the same address with .md added, so a tool can read the words without the menus and scripts around them.

What it's meant to do

An AI tool can only take in so much text at once, and Howard notes that most websites are too big to fit whole. llms.txt is meant to be a short, guided path. The proposal expects AI tools to read or search the file "to find the information they need, then follow the relevant links."

It's a different job from the two files you may already have. robots.txt tells bots what they may access (my post on AI crawlers covers that one). A sitemap lists every page for search engines. llms.txt, the proposal says, is "used on demand, when an agent needs information" while it helps someone. Howard expected it to be useful mainly "for inference rather than training": inference is the moment an AI answers someone, not the earlier work of building the model.

The proposal says the files are "used most heavily for software documentation," where coding tools follow them to the right reference page. It suggests the same structure would suit "a business outlining its structure and policies."

Who says they read it

This is where the honest answer gets thin. Here is what each party says on its own pages.

Google Search says no. Google's guide to its AI features lists "LLMS.txt files and other 'special' markup" among things you can ignore. Making one "will neither harm nor help" your visibility or rankings in Google Search, "as Google Search ignores them." Its summary says you "can ignore tactics like 'chunking' content, creating unnecessary AI text files (like llms.txt)" (Google Search Central).

Chrome's testing tool checks, gently. Lighthouse, the page-testing tool from Google's Chrome team, has an "Agentic Browsing" category that Chrome's docs call experimental (Chrome for Developers). Its llms.txt check says that without the file, "agents may spend more time crawling the site to understand its high-level structure." But a missing file is marked Not Applicable, "as providing the file is optional at the moment," and it flags a problem when your server errors on the request (Chrome for Developers).

The AI companies publish them, but don't say they read yours. OpenAI, Anthropic, Google (for its Gemini API) and Perplexity each publish an llms.txt for their own developer documentation (OpenAI, Anthropic, Gemini API, Perplexity). Perplexity's docs pages even carry a note "For AI agents" pointing to its file. That's the use the proposal describes: coding tools reading a software company's manuals. But the pages where these companies document their crawlers (OpenAI, Anthropic, Perplexity, Apple) don't mention reading an llms.txt on anyone else's site. I read each of them on October 11, 2026.

The proposal's author is upbeat. Howard writes that "thousands of sites now publish an llms.txt file" and that coding agents "use them reliably." He doesn't say how he counted, and publishing a file isn't the same as anyone reading it.

So, as of October 2026: plenty of sites publish one, Google Search ignores it, and none of the AI search companies I checked says its crawler or assistant reads one on a business site like yours.

What it costs to add one

Not much. It's one short text file, and the proposal keeps it small on purpose. Google says it won't hurt your search visibility, and Lighthouse doesn't mark you down for not having one.

Some platforms do it for you. Wix says it "automatically generates and maintains" an llms.txt for sites on a paid plan with a custom domain, and lets you view, edit or turn it off from the SEO dashboard (Wix Help Center).

If you write one by hand, here's the shape for a small business, with your own details in place of the brackets:

# [Business name]

> [One or two sentences: what you do, for whom, and where.]

[Anything an AI tool needs to describe you correctly, such as the towns you serve.]

## Main pages

- [Services](https://example.com/services): what you offer and what it costs
- [About](https://example.com/about): who runs the business
- [Contact](https://example.com/contact): phone, hours and address

## Optional

- [Blog](https://example.com/blog): articles and news

Notice what's missing: the hours and prices themselves. I'd point to the pages that hold them rather than copy them in, for the reason in the next section.

The real cost: keeping it true

An llms.txt is a second description of your business, one your customers rarely see. When your hours change, someone usually notices a wrong website quickly. Nobody notices a wrong text file.

Wix's own help page shows how easily that happens. Its file updates itself until you edit it. After that, Wix says, "it will stop updating automatically" (Wix Help Center). Edit it once to fix a detail, and from then on it's yours to keep current.

If AI tools do start relying on these files, a stale one would hand them old facts with an air of authority. That's the opposite of the point. So if you add one, put it on the same list as your Google Business Profile and your website: the places you update when something changes.

Where I've landed

popproxx.com doesn't have an llms.txt today. Ask for www.popproxx.com/llms.txt and you get the site's "Page Not Found" page.

I'm not adding one yet. If OpenAI, Anthropic, Google or Perplexity documents that its assistant reads llms.txt on ordinary business sites, I'll write one. Until then, I'd rather put the time into the pages themselves.

What this means for you

You don't need an llms.txt to show up in Google, and Google says so in writing. None of the AI search companies I checked has asked for one either.

If your platform makes one automatically, leaving it on costs you nothing by Google's account; just know it's there, and that editing it makes keeping it current your job. If you'd like to write one, the template above takes little time. Keep it short and point to your real pages.

The work that pays off with AI tools is still the ordinary kind: plain text, clear headings, accurate hours and prices, fast pages. The checklist in my AI visitors post covers it, and so does my Core Web Vitals guide for speed.

And watch for one thing: an AI company saying, on its own page, that it reads the file. That would change this answer.