llms.txt

Search is changing. Alongside traditional search engines, people are increasingly using AI tools like ChatGPT, Claude, and Perplexity to find information. An llms.txt file helps these AI models understand your business.

What it does

llms.txt is an emerging standard — a structured text file at the root of your website that provides AI language models with a clear, concise summary of who you are, what you do, and what content lives on your site. Think of it as a robots.txt for AI: a way to communicate directly with the systems that are shaping how people discover businesses online.

Why it matters for your business

When someone asks an AI assistant “Who does engineering compliance consulting in Western Australia?” or “Find me a wedding videographer in Tasmania,” the AI draws on its understanding of the web to generate an answer. An llms.txt file gives it structured, accurate information about your business to work with — straight from the source.

Without it, AI models piece together their understanding from whatever content they can scrape. With it, you’re providing a curated, authoritative summary that increases the chance your business appears in AI-generated recommendations.

What happens without it

AI models will still try to understand your site from your existing content. But they might miss key services, mischaracterise what you do, or simply not surface your business when it’s relevant. As AI search grows, the gap between businesses that actively communicate with these systems and those that don’t will only widen.

This is early-mover territory. Most businesses don’t have an llms.txt file yet — which makes having one a quiet competitive advantage.