In the last decade, best practices for SEO have focused on traditional search engines like Google, Bing, Yahoo, and others. But times are changing. Rapid advances in AI systems like Google's Gemini, ChatGPT, Claude, or Perplexity are changing how users search for information online.
Instead of typing keywords into a search box, more people are now asking questions in plain, everyday Danish and receiving curated answers compiled by language models. This shift isn't just a trend; it's becoming the new normal for digital search.
If your content isn't indexed by AI systems, it risks becoming invisible to a growing proportion of users.
To ensure your content is accessible and presented correctly in AI-generated responses, you need to know about: llms.txt.
What is llms.txt and why is it important?
Think of llms.txt as LLM instructions about your website's content: llms.txt gives large language models (LLMs) a clear, AI-friendly index of your website's content.
llms.txt acts as a content map in the style of sitemap.xml used by traditional search engines, but is specifically designed for AI bots so they can easily find, understand, and use your content.
As AI-powered searches become more prominent, a clean, accurate, and structured llms.txt file can be the difference between being included in AI results or being left out entirely.
Maintain control over AI's perception of your content
LLMs can process large amounts of content, but cluttered websites with navigation, scripts, or ads can reduce relevance and increase hallucinations by filling the context window with irrelevant tokens.
By providing customized and preferably tailored Markdown versions via an llms.txt file, AI crawlers get clean, structured content that:
- improves accuracy
- preserves context
- makes it easier to index
- increases use of your information
And it provides some tangible benefits:
- Control: you decide exactly what content AI tools can access, index, and present.
- Clarity: you guide AI bots to high-value content that is easy for them to analyze and is relevant to your customers.
- Visibility: you increase your chances of appearing in AI-generated responses with the content you most want to display.
llms.txt format and best practices for implementation
You can find examples of llms.txt files here The /llms.txt file – llms-txt:
# Title
> Optional description goes here
Optional details go here
## Section name
- [Link title](https://link_url): Optional link details
## Optional
- [Link title](https://link_url)This format helps LLMs quickly identify, understand, and retrieve your most valuable content.
The example provided is extremely sparse and only shows the most basic formatting and structure.
The standards for AI indexing are evolving, and early adopters will gain a competitive advantage.
Right now, major AI companies like OpenAI, Anthropic, Perplexity, and others have started consulting llms.txt files when crawling websites.
How can we help?
We specialize in AI, and we can prepare websites for the new era of AI-powered searches and guide you through every step of the implementation process of llms.txt.
We can advise and we can create an llms.txt that is 100 percent customized to your website.
Use llms.txt early to stay ahead of the development of AI search technologies.