Glossary
llms.txt
llms.txt is a community proposal for a markdown file at a site's root that offers language models a curated, readable summary of the site's most important content. It is a proposal published at llmstxt.org, not a standard adopted by search or AI providers, and support should not be assumed.
In plain terms
A short, hand-written index of your site aimed at AI systems. Cheap to publish, unproven in effect.
Why it matters
It costs little and makes your key facts easy to read in one place. Treat it as good hygiene and clear entity documentation rather than a ranking tactic, and be sceptical of anyone selling it as one.
How to apply it
- List your genuinely important pages with one-line descriptions.
- State the facts you want repeated: what you do, who you serve, what you charge.
- Keep it current — a stale file is worse than none.
Example
A B2B analytics company publishes an llms.txt file at its site root listing its product pages, documentation and pricing page with one-line summaries, intended to give any language model that reads it a curated map of the site's key facts rather than requiring the model to infer them from a full crawl.
Sources
Related reading
Related terms
Back to the full glossary (75 terms).
Ranking is no longer enough
You need to be cited, mentioned, and recommended.
Being cited, mentioned, and recommended are three different outcomes, and most brands only ever achieve the first one. Ranking is no longer enough because AI engines answer buyers directly and name only a short list of vendors as the recommendation — everyone else is cited in passing, if at all. Get a free AI Visibility Report to see exactly where your brand appears today across ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Gemini, Perplexity, and Copilot, where competitors are winning the recommendation instead, and what's keeping you from moving up the shortlist.