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What is llms.txt, and does it help SEO or AI citations?

llms.txt is a proposed Markdown file, published by Jeremy Howard in 2024, that lists a site's key pages for LLM agents. It does not raise rankings or AI citations: Google says Search doesn't use it, and an SE Ranking study of about 300,000 domains found no link to citations. Keep one only if coding agents read your developer docs.

This no longer works. Google's 2026 AI guide states that Google Search doesn't use llms.txt or other AI text files and that creating one neither helps nor hurts.

Status Evidence Applies to Retired
Retired Official guidance Google, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude Not dated

Why it stopped working

Google's 2026 AI guide states that Google Search doesn't use llms.txt or other AI text files and that creating one neither helps nor hurts. No AI search engine documents using it for citation selection, and an SE Ranking study of about 300,000 domains found no relationship between having the file and AI citations. llms.txt remains a community proposal, useful mainly for developer docs consumed by coding agents.

What to do instead

  1. Keep an llms.txt only if you have docs that coding agents read
  2. Spend AEO effort on crawl access, rendered HTML and content quality
  3. Make sure robots.txt and HTML, which engines do use, are correct

Example

llms.txt format
# Example Docs

> Short summary of the project

## Docs
- [Quickstart](https://www.example.com/docs/quickstart.md): install and first request

## Optional
- [Changelog](https://www.example.com/changelog.md)

Questions

Is llms.txt a ranking factor?

No. Google's 2026 guide to generative AI features says Google Search doesn't use llms.txt or other AI text files, and that creating them will neither harm nor help visibility or rankings. No AI search engine documents using it to choose citations.

Does ChatGPT use llms.txt?

OpenAI's crawler documentation covers robots.txt and does not say llms.txt affects citations. Some server logs show GPTBot occasionally fetching the file, but SE Ranking found no relationship between having one and being cited.

Should I add an llms.txt file?

Only if you publish developer docs that coding agents read. It is harmless, and about 10% of domains in the SE Ranking sample had one, but it will not move AI visibility. Put that effort into robots.txt access, server-rendered HTML and content quality, which engines do use.

Where do you put an llms.txt file?

At the site root or at any path, where it covers the pages under that path. It is Markdown: an H1 with the site or project name is the only required section, followed by an optional summary blockquote and H2 sections listing links, with an Optional section for links an agent can skip.

Sources

Change history

Date Change What changed
Oct 30, 2026 Added Added to the rulebook.

Checked against its sources every Monday. Only content changes are listed.

Rules that work instead