When an AI assistant talks about your business, it’s working from whatever it could piece together — an old listing, a half-finished About page, a guess. You never get to proofread that answer. But there’s a small, growing convention that lets you hand the AI a clean summary in its own language: a file called llms.txt, served at yoursite.com/llms.txt.

Think of it as a one-page fact sheet written for machines instead of customers. Plain text, no design, no jargon — just the truth about your business in a form an AI can read at a glance and quote with confidence.

Why this matters now

AI assistants like ChatGPT, Claude, and Perplexity build their answers from text they can clearly understand. When your details are scattered, inconsistent, or buried inside images and menus, the model has to guess — and guessing usually means leaving you out or getting you wrong. An llms.txt file removes the guesswork. It says, in one place, this is who we are, this is what we do, this is where to send people.

It won’t make you the answer on its own. But it makes you the easy answer — and the easy answer gets picked more often than the better one that’s harder to read.

What goes in it

Keep it short and factual. Here is a mini-template any owner can adapt:

# Your Business Name

> One line on what you do, for whom, and where.

- Location: street, area, city, postcode
- Service area: the neighbourhoods you cover
- Hours: e.g. Daily 10:00–22:00
- Known for: your two or three signature things

## Links
- Book / contact: https://yoursite.com/book
- Menu & prices: https://yoursite.com/menu
- Google profile: https://your-google-listing

That’s the whole idea. Real name, one honest line, where you are, when you’re open, what you’re genuinely known for, and your three most useful links. No marketing fluff — the plainer it reads, the easier it is for a model to repeat.

How to add it without a developer

It’s a text file, not code. Most owners can do this in ten minutes:

  1. Write it in any plain-text editor (Notes, Notepad, Google Docs exported as plain text). Save it as llms.txt.
  2. Upload it to the root of your site so it lives at yoursite.com/llms.txt. Most site builders let you upload a file or add a redirect; if a friend or your web person set up your site, this is a five-minute favour to ask.
  3. Open the link yourself to confirm it loads as plain text.
  4. Update it whenever your hours, address, or offer change — a stale fact sheet is worse than none.

The honest caveat

llms.txt is an emerging convention, not a magic switch. Not every AI reads it yet, and on its own it won’t move you up the rankings. It works as one clean signal among several — so pair it with the basics that already carry weight: LocalBusiness schema on your site, a consistent NAP (name, address, phone identical everywhere), and a steady flow of real reviews. The llms.txt file is the easy, no-downside addition that ties those facts together in language a machine can’t misread.

You can’t control everything an AI says about you. But you can hand it the clean version of the truth — and most of your competitors haven’t.

Not sure what AI sees when it looks you up today? Start with a free visibility check to find your baseline. The full playbook — schema, NAP, reviews, and the AI-visibility layer — is laid out step by step in the Blueprint, and we’ll set the whole thing up for you in the packages.