LLM.txt: The File That Decides If ChatGPT Recommends Your Website or Ignores It

Most businesses are fighting for rankings on Google, but here’s what no one’s telling you: ChatGPT and Gemini are the new front doors to online visibility. And if your website doesn’t have a small file called llm.txt, these AI tools might ignore you completely, even if your content is amazing.

In this blog, we’ll break down what llm.txt is, why it matters for your website in 2025, how it helps you get discovered by AI tools like ChatGPT and Gemini, and most importantly, how to create and add it in less than 10 minutes.

What Is llm.txt (And Why Is Everyone Talking About It)?

Imagine you run a beautiful clinic or business. Your website has all the right information, services, blogs, and booking links. But AI tools like ChatGPT or Perplexity don’t show your site when someone searches for your services.

Why? Because these AI models aren’t just crawling all websites freely. They’re looking for signals. llm.txt is one of the most powerful signals you can give.

llm.txt is a small text file placed on your website that tells AI bots:

  • “Here’s the most important content on my site.”
  • “Yes, you can crawl and show my content in your answers.”
  • “Please follow these rules if you use my content.”

It’s similar in concept to robots.txt (used by Google bots), but instead of search engines, llm.txt speaks directly to Large Language Models (LLMs) like ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, and Perplexity.

Why Should You Care About llm.txt?

Let’s look at the facts:

  • Over 1 billion people now use ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, and similar tools every month.
  • AI-driven discovery is expected to account for 20–30% of all web traffic by 2026 (source: Mintlify).
  • Most AI tools don’t use Google rankings to decide what to show, they use their own crawling and trust signals.

So even if you’re ranked on Google, you might be invisible to ChatGPT if it hasn’t crawled or trusted your site.

llm.txt fixes that.

It acts like a polite invitation and roadmap for AI tools. You’re saying, “Hey ChatGPT, here’s the good stuff. You’re welcome to use it.”

What Happens If You Don’t Have It?

Well… nothing dramatic. But you’ll silently lose visibility where the world is heading.

  • ChatGPT might not crawl your website at all.
  • You won’t appear in AI-generated answers, even for topics you’ve written about.
  • Competitors with similar content might get quoted instead of you.

In short, llm.txt doesn’t guarantee visibility, but not having it makes it much harder.

Real Example: How a Clinic Could Miss Out

Let’s say a woman types this into ChatGPT: “Can I get pregnant during my period?”

Your clinic has a detailed, medically reviewed blog on this, but you didn’t set up llm.txt. Another site that wrote a similar article, but has llm.txt in place, gets quoted instead.

Your content is better, but AI never saw it.

This is happening every day across industries, and that’s why you need to act early.

What Does a Good llm.txt Look Like?

Here’s a sample:

# MyClinic.in
> Modern women’s health clinic with expert-written blogs, patient education, and fertility care.

## Core Pages
- https://myclinic.in/about
- https://myclinic.in/services
- https://myclinic.in/blog/can-you-get-pregnant-on-period
- https://myclinic.in/book-appointment

## Optional Pages
- https://myclinic.in/gallery
- https://myclinic.in/events

Explanation:

  • # Title: Your brand or site name.
  • > Summary: One-line mission of your site.
  • Core Pages: The most helpful, structured pages you want AI to focus on.
  • Optional Pages: Less critical stuff that can be skipped.

It’s that simple.

How to Create and Add Your Own llm.txt File

Don’t worry, you don’t need to code anything. Just follow these steps:

  1. Open Notepad or any text editor on your computer.
  2. Copy the format shown above and add your own links + summary.
  3. Save the file as llm.txt (not .docx, not .md).
  4. Upload it to your website’s root directory (same place as robots.txt).

If your site is https://rankved.com, your new file should be at:

https://rankved.com/llms.txt

Done. AI bots can now find it automatically.

Bonus: What NOT to Do with llm.txt

Here are common mistakes to avoid:

  • Don’t include broken links or redirects.
  • Don’t write huge summaries or marketing fluff, keep it factual.
  • Don’t skip it just because you already have SEO set up, this is a different channel.

Do You Still Need SEO If You Have llm.txt?

Yes, absolutely.

llm.txt is a way to guide AI crawlers. But what they see still needs to be:

  • Well-written
  • Accurate and updated
  • Expert-backed (especially in medical, legal, or finance)

AI doesn’t just read your site, it judges your content quality too.

Final Thoughts: Give AI a Map, Not a Maze

AI models are not magical. They still need help understanding what to show. With llm.txt, you give them exactly what they need, and you give yourself a shot at being discovered, quoted, and trusted.

Whether you run a clinic, a legal firm, a coaching business, or an e-commerce store, this file might soon be as important as your homepage itself.

Add it. Forget it. Benefit from it.

Need help setting this up on your WordPress site? Reach out to us, we’ve helped dozens of businesses go from invisible to featured.

Coming next: We’ll show you how to track which AI tools are crawling your site using server logs and detection tools. Stay tuned!

Test Your LLM.txt Knowledge –

🧠 Can You Guide the AI?

Test your knowledge about LLM.txt files