Answers · AI search · As of 6 October 2026
What is llms.txt, and does my website need it?
Short answerllms.txt is a text file in the root directory of a website that gives AI programs a table of contents1. It does no harm. However, a comparison by Trakkr found no difference in the citations in AI answers5.
What is the file intended for?
Providers with extensive documentation use it as a signpost. Brevo states in its documentation that an index for AI agents is available at /llms.txt1. OpenAI and n8n also refer to it in their documentation23.
How widespread is llms.txt?
Ahrefs analysed 137,000 domains. 28% of them publish an llms.txt4.
Is the file actually retrieved at all?
Rarely. 97% of the files were not retrieved a single time in May 2026. Where retrievals did arrive, 96% came from bots4.
If the file is missing, nobody goes looking for it either: not a single request from AI bots came in for non-existent llms.txt files4.
Does the file bring more citations?
A comparison by Trakkr shows no difference: domains with llms.txt averaged 6.8 citations, domains without the file 6.75.
What remains decisive is whether the crawlers of the AI services are allowed to fetch your pages at all and can read the content.
Sources
- Brevo: developer documentation: developers.brevo.com
- OpenAI: platform documentation: platform.openai.com
- n8n: documentation: docs.n8n.io
- Ahrefs: llms.txt study: ahrefs.com
- Trakkr: The llms.txt effect: trakkr.ai
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