Do I need llms.txt for AI search?
Probably not. Google’s guidance says you don’t need llms.txt or any other special file to appear in its AI Overviews and AI Mode. llms.txt is a proposal for a plain text file that lists a site’s main pages for AI tools, and support for it is uneven.
What llms.txt is
It is a plain text file, written in Markdown, that sits at the top of a website, for example at yoursite.com/llms.txt. It holds the site’s name, a short summary and lists of links to the pages an AI tool should read, each with a one-line note.
Jeremy Howard proposed it in September 2024 at llmstxt.org, where the specification is described as open for community input. It is a proposal that anyone can follow.
What the sources say about support
Google’s guidance on AI features and your website, last updated in December 2025, says: “You don’t need to create new machine readable files, AI text files, or markup to appear in these features.” It adds that no special schema is needed, and that a page must be indexed and eligible to show with a snippet.
In June 2025 John Mueller of Google wrote on Bluesky that no AI system currently uses llms.txt. That is one statement on one date.
OpenAI’s crawler page names OAI-SearchBot as the crawler that surfaces websites in ChatGPT search, and says sites that opt out in robots.txt are left out of ChatGPT search answers. We have not found a statement from OpenAI that ChatGPT search reads a site’s llms.txt, and we have not tested it ourselves.
So, as far as these sources say, the search assistants most owners care about read llms.txt rarely or not at all.
What to do instead
- Make sure your pages can be indexed and shown with a snippet in Google Search. Google says this is what makes a page eligible for its AI features, and that indexing and serving are never guaranteed.
- If you want ChatGPT search to be able to show your site, check that your robots.txt does not block OAI-SearchBot.
- Put the answer to a customer’s question in ordinary text on a page of your own site, such as what you do after a storm or how a same-day repair works. In our early study, businesses with such a page were named for that question. That is an association in a small sample. See Is ChatGPT recommending my business?.
If you want to add one anyway
It is a short text file. Write the site name as a heading, a sentence or two of summary, then a list of links to your main pages with a short note on each, and save it as llms.txt at the top of your site. Ask whoever manages your site whether you can place a file there. Do the steps above first. The file is a small extra.
We publish an llms.txt on this site because it costs little.
What a report adds
No file on your site can tell you what ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude say about your business. A report does. It shows how many of 180 answers named you, who was named instead and what to fix first.
One report is $97, and it includes a free re-check 30 days later, so you see what changed.
Be notified when we launchMore questions owners ask
Who proposed llms.txt?
Jeremy Howard, in September 2024. The proposal and its format are at llmstxt.org.
Is llms.txt the same as robots.txt?
No. A robots.txt file tells crawlers which parts of a site they may fetch, and OpenAI says it controls whether OAI-SearchBot uses your site in ChatGPT search. An llms.txt file lists pages you would like AI tools to read. They do different jobs.
Where do I see traffic from Google’s AI features?
Google says it is reported in Search Console, in the Performance report, under the Web search type.