What Is llms.txt, And Why It Matters for Your Website

Summary

• llms.txt lets you guide AI tools to your site’s most important content.
• It’s respected by major LLMs like OpenAI, Anthropic (Claude), Perplexity, and Google.
• WordPress plugins like Yoast and AIOSEO make adding llms.txt simple and fast.

What Is llms.txt?

As AI tools like ChatGPT, Claude, and Perplexity become part of how people research, learn, and make decisions, your website content isn’t just showing up in search engines — it’s showing up in AI-generated answers.

That’s why having a llms.txt is so important.

The llms.txt file (short for “Large Language Models”) is a new way to tell AI bots which parts of your website to prioritize — or avoid — when crawling your content. It works similarly to robots.txt, but it’s focused specifically on AI crawlers.

While it’s not yet an internet standard, many of the most popular LLMs already honor it, including:

• OpenAI
• Anthropic (Claude)
• Perplexity
• Google (via Google-Extended)
• You.com

Why Use llms.txt to Highlight Content?

The real power of llms.txt isn’t just in keeping AI out — it’s in helping it find your best, most useful, and most brand-aligned content.

You can use it to:

• Highlight educational blog posts
• Guide AI bots to evergreen resources
• Ensure your public-facing content is accurately represented in AI responses

It’s a chance to shape your presence in AI-driven search results, summaries, and chat-based discovery — before someone else defines you.

Sample llms.txt File to Guide LLMs

Here’s an example of what a basic file might look like:

User-Agent: *
Allow: /resources/
Allow: /guides/
Disallow: /members-only/

This tells all AI bots:

• Yes, include the content in /resources/ and /guides/
• No, do not use anything from the /members-only/ area

This works because you aren’t just blocking everything, you are telling the LLMs what you want featured and what you want them to ignore.

How to Add llms.txt in WordPress

Sound confusing? Don’t worry, if your website is using either the Yoast or AIOSEO plugins, adding llms.txt is easy:

• Yoast SEO — Add and edit your llms.txt content right from the dashboard.
• All in One SEO (AIOSEO) — Also supports creating and customizing llms.txt.

Just drop in your rules, save, and you’re done.

What About Blocking AI Bots?

If you want to exclude private or premium content from being used by AI tools, llms.txt can help with that, too.

For example:

User-Agent: OpenAI
Disallow: /premium-content/

This is especially useful when you have content you’d prefer not to appear in AI-generated search results — like premium content meant only for your members. You might also notice that a particular LLM crawler is putting a strain on your server, in which case limiting its access can help reduce unnecessary load.

The Future of llms.txt

As search and discovery shift toward AI-powered tools, llms.txt offers a proactive way to make sure the right parts of your site show up in the right places.

If you’re creating great content, this is your moment to help AI tools find it, understand it, and share it in the way you intended.

Take five minutes to craft your llms.txt file, and you’ll be giving yourself a strategic edge in the age of AI search.