AEO Glossary
llms.txt is a plain text file placed at the root of a website (e.g., yourdomain.com/llms.txt) that provides a human-readable and machine-readable summary of a site's content, purpose, and key pages. It is an emerging standard designed specifically for large language models (LLMs) and AI crawlers to quickly understand a website without processing all its HTML.
AI crawlers like GPTBot and ClaudeBot read thousands of pages and need fast signals about what a site is authoritative on. llms.txt gives them a direct brief: who you are, what you do, and which pages to prioritize. Sites with a well-written llms.txt are more likely to be cited accurately in AI-generated answers because the model has an authoritative first-person source for your brand's identity.
Create a file named llms.txt in your web root. Start with a # heading of your brand name, then a > blockquote with a one-sentence brand description, then ## sections for About, Key Pages, and Brand Description. For CMS platforms that don't allow root file access (Shopify, Squarespace), host the file on a CDN and add a 301 redirect from /llms.txt to the raw file URL.
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