Does llms.txt help your business show up in AI search?

Say someone asks ChatGPT, Claude, or another AI assistant, “What's a good CRM for a five-person sales team?” Or, “What's the best Pilates studio in Condesa, Mexico City?”

For ChatGPT as an example, we can break down the sources of information into four parts:

1. Public internet content. Material from websites, articles and forums used during model training.

2. Information from partners. Data that OpenAI uses through agreements with third parties to develop its models.

3. Material from users, human trainers and researchers. Information they provide or generate for model development.

These are the three sources described by OpenAI. They give the model existing knowledge about products, businesses, and how things work. Some of this information may be outdated, and that’s where the next source comes into play.

4. Live web search. ChatGPT may look up current information from websites, pricing pages, reviews, and directories. It uses what it finds to answer the user's question. Here's how ChatGPT search works.

This assumes a fresh chat without personal history or connected apps. The original question from the user also adds more context for the search: five salespeople, or Pilates in a particular neighborhood. ChatGPT uses that context to suggest options. Your website helps with the answer as well. And so could someone else's review of your business on a 3rd party website.

In 2025, we went all in on llms.txt. We created our own file and built a public tool that let businesses generate one using their Google Maps and website data.

So, yes, we were enthusiastic.

The idea made sense: give AI tools a short guide to your website (basically an LLM-readable sitemap) so they can find useful information. That's what the llms.txt proposal intended.

But a guide to your website isn't sufficient for your business to get recommended in AI search.

Google says it doesn't use llms.txt for Search, including its AI features. SE Ranking's research also didn't establish a useful relationship between having llms.txt and getting cited. Ahrefs' study found very little fetching of existing files in its sample.

We also got parts of our earlier article wrong. llms.txt doesn't control crawling or training permissions, and leaving it out doesn't automatically exclude your business from AI answers. We've corrected that advice here.

Do you already have a llms.txt file? That's fine, and you can keep it. But we wouldn't recommend spending more time on it expecting better search visibility.

An in-depth guide for showing up in AI search, or what’s known as AEO or GEO, requires another article. But in the meantime, here are four ways to get started to make sure the basics are covered before you start doing more advanced work on content creation.

If you're building your website with an AI assistant like Codex or Claude Code, you can ask your assistant to do these for you. If you’re using a website builder like WordPress or Wix, you can still take some of these actions, especially around content accuracy.

1. Make sure search engines can access your website

Search engines use bots, also called crawlers, to visit websites and read their pages. If your site blocks those visits, the service may be unable to use your content in search results. A site can work for you in a browser and still block a bot.

ChatGPT: OAI-SearchBot helps websites appear in ChatGPT search results. GPTBot collects content that may be used for training; you can allow search access while keeping GPTBot blocked.

Claude: Claude-SearchBot supports search. ClaudeBot is used for potential training data, and Claude-User retrieves pages in response to users' requests.

Google: Googlebot crawls pages for Google Search, including its AI features. A page must be indexed and eligible to appear with a snippet to qualify for AI Overviews or AI Mode.

So, yes, there are settings you can change to make your public pages accessible. Your robots.txt file tells crawlers where they can go. Indexing settings can keep pages out of search, and your hosting provider's bot protection can block visits too. Removing unintended blocks helps make your content available; it doesn't guarantee a recommendation.

Give your developer or AI assistant this prompt:

Check my website for anything preventing our public pages from being crawled or indexed. Focus on Googlebot, OAI-SearchBot and Claude-SearchBot, using their current official documentation.

Review robots.txt, noindex and snippet restrictions, sitemap entries, canonical URLs, internal links, and whether the main page text is available to crawlers. Check hosting and firewall rules for bot blocks or verification challenges.

Fix unintended restrictions, keeping private pages, training opt-outs and security protections intact. Recheck the live pages and report the affected URLs, changes and evidence. Say what you couldn't verify; a request using a bot's name alone doesn't prove that the real bot has access. If you can't access a setting, give me the steps for my website platform.

After the changes, use Search Console to inspect your homepage and a few product or service pages. Check whether Google can access them and whether they're indexed. This verifies Google's status, but of course still doesn't confirm inclusion in ChatGPT or Claude.

2. Double-check that your business info is accurate

AI search can draw on your website and other places where your business appears. If your site lists one price and your business profile lists another, you're giving people conflicting answers before they've even spoken to you.

Start with a list of facts you've checked: prices, opening hours, address, contact details, services, and policies. For software, include plan limits and integrations. Compare those facts with your website and the profiles you manage. Google's advice on useful content puts accuracy and trust at the center.

Give your developer or AI assistant this prompt:

Compare my website and the business profiles I link below with these confirmed business details: [paste details]. List outdated, conflicting, or missing information, with the URL and suggested correction. Don't guess prices, policies, or features. Flag anything I need to confirm, and tell me which profiles I need to update myself.

Check the proposed corrections before publishing. When something changes, update the places where customers will see it.

3. Make your business info easy to find

Correct information is only useful if someone can find it. A customer shouldn't have to open five pages to learn whether your Pilates studio welcomes beginners. For a five-person sales team, a CRM's pricing page should make the total cost and plan limits clear.

Start with five questions your customers ask before buying. Put the answers on the pages where they'd expect them: prices on the pricing page, class details on the timetable, and cancellation terms near the booking link. Use readable text, even if you also have an image or PDF.

Try this prompt:

Find answers to these five customer questions on my website: [paste questions]. For each one, give me the page URL and the answer you found. Flag anything missing or hard to find. Draft additions using only the business facts I've confirmed, and suggest where to place them and which pages should link to them.

Then ask someone unfamiliar with your business to find those answers without your help. Their stumbling points give you a useful edit list.

4. Make sure your website is agent friendly

A browser agent can visit your site on someone's behalf to compare plans or start a booking. It needs to understand the page and use its controls. Clear button names, labeled form fields, and menus that work reliably help it do that. Google's guide to agent-friendly websites explains the basics.

Pick one task a customer would actually want to complete. For a studio, that could be finding a beginner class and reaching its booking form. For software, it could be choosing a plan for five people.

Ask an assistant with browser access:

Visit my website and try this task: [describe task]. Stop before submitting a form, booking, purchasing, or creating an account. Report each step, where you got stuck, and any unclear buttons, unlabeled fields, or pop-ups that blocked you. Don't bypass security checks.

Give that report to your developer or AI builder. Have them fix the specific problems, then repeat the task. This checks whether an agent can use your site; it doesn't establish whether AI search will recommend it.

Both can make a busy website easier to use. Neither should come before the basics above.

What is a Markdown file?

A .md file contains plain text with simple formatting for headings, lists, and links. A Markdown version of a page can give readers and AI tools its content without the surrounding navigation or visual design.

It isn't automatically a sitemap. A sitemap lists page URLs for search engines. llms.txt is a particular file that uses Markdown to introduce a site and link to useful content. A separate file such as pricing.md could contain the pricing page itself. The llms.txt proposal describes how these can work together.

If you offer Markdown, generate it from the same content as the page so prices and policies stay in sync. It's optional: Google doesn't require Markdown for its AI search features.

When is a “Summarize with AI” button useful?

If your website is packed with information, a summary button can help a reader get the main points or ask a follow-up question. Think of a long product guide or a detailed service page.

Make it clear which AI service the button opens. Test whether that service can read the page, and offer a copy-text option if it can't. Check that summaries preserve important conditions, such as pricing limits or cancellation terms. The benefit is helping the person already on your site; don't present it as a way to improve search rankings.

Say someone finds your business through ChatGPT and visits your site. They like what they see, but they still have a question: “Can I try a class before buying a package?” or “Does this plan have an API usage limit?”

A Visito business agent can answer those questions using the information you give it and guide customers toward the next step.

Start with your current prices, services, policies, and common questions. Test the agent with questions your customers actually ask, and set up a handoff to your team when it needs help.

Build your business agent for free with Visito