llms.txt: what is it for and should you create one?

The llms.txt is a text file placed at the root of your site (yoursite.com/llms.txt) that introduces your company and your most important pages to language models in a simple, readable format. It is an open convention, not an official standard.

The topic is divisive. On one side, articles claim it is the key to visibility in AI. On the other, SEO experts argue it is useless. Both are partially right, and that is precisely what makes the decision simple.

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What is the llms.txt file?

The format was proposed in September 2024 by Jeremy Howard, co-founder of Answer.AI, on the site llmstxt.org. The idea: a web page is full of menus, scripts, and layout elements that a language model must sort through before understanding the core content. The llms.txt gives it the essentials directly, in Markdown.

An llms.txt file generally contains:

• the company name and a brief summary;
• key information: offerings, target audience, markets, and published pricing;
• a list of links to reference pages, each with a descriptive sentence;
• sometimes, guidelines for citing the brand correctly.

Some sites add a second file, llms-full.txt, which includes the full content of the pages. This is primarily useful for technical documentation.

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llms.txt, robots.txt, and sitemaps: what is the difference?

The robots.txt tells bots what they are allowed to crawl. The sitemap.xml gives them a list of all your URLs. The llms.txt, however, controls nothing and does not list everything: it presents what matters, with context.

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Do AIs really read the llms.txt?

Not really, as of now. Neither OpenAI, Google, nor Anthropic have announced that they use llms.txt to select sources for their answers. In 2025, Google's John Mueller compared it to the old meta keywords tag: a file that search engines have no reason to take at face value. Tests published by SeoMix also show that AI bots rarely consult it.

However, the ecosystem has adopted it. Documentation publishers like Mintlify or GitBook generate it automatically, Yoast SEO offers it on WordPress, and AI-assisted coding tools read the llms.txt of technical documentation. The file is therefore read by certain tools, but not by the engines that matter for your visibility.

Our take: the llms.txt is not a lever for visibility. It is an official, low-cost identity card that will gain value if the major players adopt it.

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Why we have one anyway

Because it takes an hour to set up and carries no risk. And because it forces us to write down exactly what we want AIs to remember: what we do, for whom, at what price, and which pages to cite. This exercise is useful in itself. It often reveals inconsistencies between what the site says and what the company wants to convey.

We implement it on all the sites we support for SEO & GEO, knowing that it is not what makes the difference.

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What we put in ours

Our llms.txt is live at we-r.co/llms.txt. It follows five blocks:

• A summary at the top. Two sentences stating who We-R is, where we are based, how long we have been operating, and our three areas of expertise. This is the section a model will pick up most easily.
• Verifiable facts. Domain, target audience, positioning, services, published pricing (websites starting from €10,000 excl. VAT, SEO & GEO starting from €1,000 per month), Webflow awards, and markets. Only include information that is also present on the website.
• Instructions for AIs. Respond in the user's language, cite We-R with a link, never promise rankings or timelines that aren't published, and direct users to the contact page for a quote.
• The content map. Core pages, service pages, and case studies, in both French and English, each with its title and a descriptive sentence.
• The link to the sitemap, for everything else.

The file is updated with every new important page or change in our offering. An llms.txt that contradicts the website does more harm than good.

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How to create an llms.txt in 4 steps

1. List your reference pages : homepage, service pages, about, contact, case studies, and pillar articles. Not the entire site, just what you want to be cited.
2. Write one sentence per page that explains what can be found there, without marketing fluff.
3. Add a summary and your key facts at the top of the file: who you are, who you serve, what you offer, and your prices if they are published.
4. Publish the file at the root directory of the site. In Webflow, it is added directly in the site's SEO settings.

To speed things up, our free llms.txt generator prepares an initial version based on your site. You just need to review and adjust it manually.

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What matters more than the llms.txt

If your goal is to be cited by ChatGPT, Perplexity, or AI Overviews, the llms.txt file ranks far behind three other priorities: pages that answer your buyers' actual questions, a site that AI can read effortlessly, and mentions on the third-party sources they consult. We detail these levers in our article How to appear in ChatGPT.

And if you want to know where your brand stands in AI responses, that is the starting point of our SEO & GEO consulting.

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Last updated: October 2026.

Sources: llmstxt.org (proposal by Jeremy Howard, Answer.AI, September 2024) · John Mueller (Google), 2025 public statements on llms.txt · SeoMix, llms.txt file test · Yoast SEO, Mintlify, and GitBook documentation · we-r.co llms.txt.