Artificial intelligence is rapidly changing the way people retrieve information online. ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude do not browse search results like traditional search engines, but read and interpret the content of web pages directly. This development brings with it a completely new question: how to ensure that AI understands your company's website correctly and finds relevant information there?
One recent solution to this is LLMs.txt: a new, lightweight and clear file that helps AI models understand the structure and content of the site more effectively.
LLMs.txt is a simple text file that is placed in the root directory of the website (e.g. at .fi/llms.txt). Its purpose is to tell large language models (Large Language Models such as ChatGPT and Gemini) which parts of the site are most important and where to find reliable information.
The file is written in Markdown format so that AI models can read and interpret it easily. It may contain links to, for example, company service pages, blogs, contact pages, and other key content.
Traditional web standards, such as robots.txt or sitemap.xml, were created for search engines, not artificial intelligence models. LLMs.txt was developed because current HTML structures are often too complex for artificial intelligence: pages have ads, scripts, and elements that make it difficult to interpret the text.
The idea of LLMS.txt was introduced Jeremy Howard in the fall of 2024, and has since been tested in a number of artificial intelligence systems. Although it has not yet become an official standard, it is the first step towards Artificial Intelligence Optimization (GEO: Generative Engine Optimization).
Robots.txt
Controls the indexing of search engines (such as Google)
Used to support SEO (SEO)
Tells you which pages may or may not be indexed
Search robots as a target group
LLMs.txt
Control the data readout of AI models
Used in support of GEO (Artificial Intelligence Optimization)
Highlights what content AI should read
Target AI models such as ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude
In practice, the two files complement each other, as robots.txt tells search engines what to index, while LLMs.txt tells AI what to understand and exploit.
LLMs.txt is a lightweight and curated list of the most important pages. It serves as a guideline for AI: “these are the core contents of my business, start with these.”
LLMs Full.txt in turn, there is a broader file that would list the URLs of the entire site -- a bit like an XML sitemap does for search engines. This format is not yet officially in use, but is being considered as a complementary option.
LLM comes from words Large Language Model — the foundation of major language models such as ChatGPT and Gemini. When a user asks the AI a question, the model retrieves information from the web and combines it with its existing data. If your company's website is well built and its content is for artificial intelligence in an easy-to-read format, it is more likely to be involved in AI responses.
In other words, LLMs.txt helps ensure that AI can “read” your business correctly and raise accordingly to relevant answers.
Maintaining a file by hand can be tedious. If the links are misspelled, the content is not up to date, or the file is not in the correct directory, the AI can ignore it.
Therefore, it is important:
You can update the file automatically, for example, using a site management system or a script.
There is no official universal support yet, but several AI systems (such as ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity) have begun testing the exploitation of LLMS.txt.
Like robots.txt in the past, this file may also form in the future as a general standard. Even now, introducing it is a low-risk way to prepare for what's to come, and to be ready if and when the standard comes into play.
Not directly. LLMs.txt will not change how Google crawls your site. It does not replace the XML sitemap and does not affect SEO rankings. Its purpose is to complement search engine optimization with artificial intelligence optimization, that is, to ensure that both search engines and artificial intelligence understand your content correctly.
In the future, customers will increasingly stop Googling services, but will ask directly to AI. If your company's content is then in a form that is easily interpreted by AI, you will be visible where your customers are looking for information.
LLMs.txt is a simple but strategically important tool in that direction.
LLMs.txt is a new way to tell AI what is essential to your company's website. It is not yet an official standard, but its early adoption could bring a major competitive advantage as artificial intelligence searches become more common.
Wannado helps companies optimize websites for both search engines and artificial intelligence - clearly, responsibly and strategically. If you want to make sure that your business is also found in AI searches, we are here to help!
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