The template
Replace everything in square brackets and delete any section you cannot fill truthfully. Keep the H1 and the blockquote: llmstxt.org proposes one H1, one blockquote summary, then sections of links with a short note after each, and that is all the shape there is.
# [Your company name]
> [One sentence: what you do, for whom, where, since when. For example: Residential and commercial plumbing for [city] and [county], family-run since [year].]
Last updated: [YYYY-MM-DD]
## What we do
- [Service one]: [what it includes and who it is for, in one line]
- [Service two]: [one line]
- [Service three]: [one line]
## Where
- Address: [street], [city], [state or province] [postal code]
- Area served: [the towns, neighborhoods or counties you travel to]
- Hours: [Mon to Fri 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Sat 9 a.m. to 1 p.m.; closed Sun]
## Prices
- [Service one]: from $[amount]; [what that covers]
- [Service two]: [a range, or "quoted in writing within one working day"]
- [Delete this whole section if you do not publish prices]
## Pages worth reading
- [Service one](https://www.example.com/services/[slug]): [what the page answers, in one line]
- [Questions and answers](https://www.example.com/faq): [the five questions buyers ask, answered]
- [Reviews](https://www.example.com/reviews): [how many, from which platform]
- [About](https://www.example.com/about): [who runs it, licenses, since when]
## Contact
- Phone: [the one number that is on the site]
- Email: [address]
- Booking: [URL, or "call during hours"]What each line is for
| Line | What it is for | What to write |
|---|---|---|
| The H1 | The name a model should use for you | Your trading name, exactly as it appears on the site and the Google Business Profile |
| The blockquote | The one-sentence summary, and the only line many readers will take | What you do, for whom, where, since when. No adjectives. |
| Last updated | Whether the prices and hours can be trusted | The date you last checked every line |
| What we do | The services, named the way buyers name them | One line each: what it includes and who it is for |
| Where | Address, area served and hours, as text | The same address and hours as the site, word for word |
| Prices | The thing a buyer asks first | A price, a starting price or a range; delete the section if you do not publish prices |
| Pages worth reading | Where a model should go for detail | Each service page, the answers, the reviews and the about page, with a note on what each answers |
| Contact | How to reach a person | The one phone number, one email, and how to book |
Where the file goes and how to check it
- Save it as
llms.txt: plain text, UTF-8, no HTML. - Put it at the root of the host your site serves from, so it answers at
https://www.example.com/llms.txt. The same host rule as robots.txt applies: a copy onwwwdoes nothing for the bare domain, and the other way round. - Fetch it with the command below. A
200and a text content type (text/plainortext/markdown) means it is served. A404means it is not at the root; an HTML content type means the platform is serving a page in its place. - Open it in a browser and read it as a stranger would. If the blockquote line does not say what you do and where, rewrite that line before anything else.
- Change the date whenever a price, an hour or an address changes. A file that contradicts the site is a second source of truth, and you do not want two.
curl -I https://www.example.com/llms.txtWhat llms.txt will and will not do
It is a proposal. llmstxt.org describes a format; it is not a standard any assistant has committed to, and Google's page on AI features says no special file is required for AI Overviews or AI Mode. In our audit of 9,483 small business websites (40 trades, 90 metros, September 2026), 63.6% publish none, and we put that finding last in the article because we are not sure it matters yet.
What it costs is an hour, and what it shows is whether anyone has thought about machine readers. Write it after robots.txt, which every crawler reads; after the LocalBusiness markup, which describes the business to any machine that parses schema.org; and after the answers are on the pages the file points at. A file that points at pages with nothing quotable on them points at nothing.