llms.txt is a proposed plain-text file at the root of your website that gives AI tools a short, curated summary of your business and key pages. It is a community proposal, not a standard that Google or any major AI provider has confirmed using. It costs little to make, so treat it as a low-priority extra after the fundamentals.
llms.txt is a proposed plain-text file, sitting at yoursite.co.nz/llms.txt, that gives AI tools a short, curated summary of your business and its most important pages. It is a community proposal. No major AI provider, and not Google, has confirmed that it uses the file to decide what to cite. So it is cheap to make, unproven in effect, and best treated as a low-priority extra.
What the file is meant to be
The idea behind llms.txt is simple. Websites are built for people, with menus, banners and scripts. An AI tool reading your site has to wade through all that to find the useful bits. The proposal is that you hand it a tidy, human-readable summary instead: who you are, what you do, and where the important pages are.
A typical file is plain text or light markdown. It has your business name, a couple of sentences describing it, and a list of key pages, each with a one-line description. That is all. It is not code, it does not change how your pages look, and visitors will never see it unless they type the address.
Because it is a proposal, there is no official rulebook you can point to. Different people write them differently. Anything anyone tells you about what it "triggers" in an AI product is a guess unless that company has said so publicly.
What it will not do
Be clear on this before you spend any time on it:
- It is not a ranking factor that Google has confirmed.
- It does not guarantee a mention or citation in ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google's AI Overviews or anything else.
- It does not replace good pages. If your service pages are vague, a tidy summary file will not fix that.
- It does not control how AI tools describe you. It is one more piece of information, not an instruction.
Google's own documentation on AI features in Search says there are no additional requirements to appear in those features beyond the usual Search guidance. That is the honest baseline: do the fundamentals well and keep your content crawlable and useful.
Where it fits among the basics
Before llms.txt, the things worth your time are well known. Clear service pages for each thing you do and each area you cover. A properly filled-in Business Profile. Consistent name, address and phone details everywhere. Accurate schema markup on your site. Genuine reviews. Our overview of generative engine optimisation and the practical list in our AI visibility tips cover those in more detail.
If those are in decent shape and you have an hour spare, llms.txt is a reasonable thing to add. If they are not, do those first. The file should summarise a good site, not paper over a weak one.
What to put in one
Say a Sumner physiotherapy clinic wanted to make a file. A sensible layout would be:
- Name and description. The clinic name, one or two plain sentences on what it does, and who it serves.
- Key facts. Address, phone, opening hours, the suburbs it serves, and any registrations or memberships you can show on the site.
- Main pages. A short list of links, each with a line: the page for sports injuries, the page for ACC-related treatment, the booking page, the contact page, the About page with named practitioners.
- Anything people often ask. Two or three short facts, such as whether a referral is needed or whether parking is available.
Keep it short. A cafe in Merivale does not need a page-by-page catalogue of its menu; a handful of key pages and the facts a new customer needs is plenty. A long file defeats the purpose of being a summary. Use plain language, the same name spelling as everywhere else, and no marketing puff.
The one rule: it must match your real site
Every statement in the file should be something visitors can verify on your pages. Do not list services you do not offer, areas you do not cover, or awards you cannot show. Mismatches between sources are the opposite of what helps anyone understand who you are. Once the file is live, checking whether AI tools mention you each month will show you whether the details being repeated about you are right.
How to publish and maintain it
Upload the file as llms.txt to the top level of your site so it loads at your domain followed by /llms.txt. Check it opens in a browser as plain text. If you use a website platform that makes uploading root files awkward, ask your developer rather than forcing it.
Then put a reminder in your calendar to review it whenever your services, prices or contact details change, and at least twice a year otherwise. We publish one on this site, but we cannot show that it makes a difference, and you should not expect it to.
So, does your business need one?
No, you do not need one. If you have the basics sorted and some spare time, it is a harmless extra. If you do not, skip it and spend the hour on a service page or collecting a genuine review.
If you would like help working out which basics to tackle first, our GEO service for Christchurch businesses is built around that question, and a free SEO audit is a good place to start.
