By Iliass El Barhoumi · Published · Last updated
How is llms.txt file scored?
llms.txt file is worth 4 of 100 points, 4 of the 25 in the Retrieved lever, which asks “Can an engine fetch this page at all?” The engine scores it with these rules:
- 4 points for a well-formed /llms.txt: an H1 title, a summary, sections and described links.
- 2 points for a file that exists but is thin (under 50 characters or missing structure).
- Nothing for no file, and the fix text says plainly that the evidence for an effect is weak.
What does a pass and a fail look like?
| Verdict | Example |
|---|---|
| Pass | A /llms.txt with “# Site name”, a one-line summary in a blockquote, and sections of links each followed by a sentence describing the page. |
| Fail | No file, or one auto-generated as a bare list of every URL in the sitemap with no descriptions, which tells a model nothing the sitemap did not. |
How do you fix llms.txt file?
In the order worth doing it:
- Generate a draft from your sitemap with the free llms.txt generator.
- Keep only the pages you would hand a new customer, and write one real sentence for each.
- Publish it at /llms.txt and spend no more time on it than that.
A scan reports the evidence behind the verdict, such as the sections, paragraphs or tokens that failed, and the fix prompt hands the same evidence to a coding agent so it can make the change for you.
Related checks in the Retrieved lever
- Is your robots.txt blocking AI crawlers? — 8 points
- Do AI crawlers run JavaScript? — 7 points
- What stops a page from being indexed at all? — 6 points
Frequently asked questions
Do ChatGPT or Google read llms.txt?
None of the major answer engines has committed to reading it. Google has said it does not use it for Search. It is cheap to publish, which is the only reason it is in the model at all.
What is the difference between llms.txt and robots.txt?
robots.txt tells crawlers what they may fetch and is honoured by the major ones. llms.txt is a proposed, optional list of pages worth reading, with no enforcement and no confirmed reader.