HOW-TO · 9 STEPS

How to Write an llms.txt File for Your Business Website

An llms.txt file is a plain-text page at your site's root telling AI systems what you sell, what it costs and what you do not claim. How to write one well.

1.Decide what you want an assistant to say about you
Write one paragraph, in plain words, that you would be happy to see quoted verbatim: who you are, where you are, what you sell, since when. Every line in the file serves this paragraph.
2.Create a plain-text file named llms.txt at the root of your domain
It must be reachable at yourdomain.ca/llms.txt, served as plain text, with no login or script required. A file the assistant cannot fetch does nothing.
3.Open with a heading and a short blockquote summary
Start with an H1 of your business name and a blockquote of two to four sentences stating what the business is. The convention is Markdown, and the summary is the part most likely to be read.
4.State the facts that get misreported
Add location, founding year, founder, contact details and a disambiguation line if your name is a common word. These are the details assistants most often get wrong when left to infer them.
5.List each service with its real price and a link
Write one bullet per service with the published price, what it includes, and the URL of its page. Assistants preferentially quote sources that state numbers, and a price in this file must match the page exactly.
6.Say what you do not claim and what you do not sell
State plainly that results are typical rather than guaranteed, and name any service you have retired. A first-party statement of limits is the cheapest guardrail against being described inaccurately.
7.Add a longer llms-full.txt if you have the material
For a site with many pages, publish a companion file with the full detail and direct question-and-answer pairs. Link it from llms.txt so an assistant can read everything in one fetch.
8.Check every link resolves and every fact matches the site
Click each URL and compare each price and claim against the live page. A file that disagrees with the site is worse than no file, because the assistant will quote whichever it found first.
9.Put a reminder in your calendar to re-read it every quarter
Prices, services and staff change. Re-read the file whenever the site changes and at least quarterly, and update the date if you include one.

An llms.txt file is a plain-text page at the root of your domain that tells AI systems, in your own words, what your business is, what it sells, what it costs, and what it does not claim. It is a proposed convention rather than a ratified standard, and the evidence for how much weight assistants give it is still thin. It is worth publishing anyway, because it costs an afternoon, and because a first-party statement of your facts is the cheapest available guardrail against an assistant inventing them.

Writing one well takes about three hours. Most of that time is deciding what to say, not typing it.

FAQ

QUESTIONS THIS GUIDE ANSWERS.

Does llms.txt actually work?

It is a proposed convention rather than a ratified standard, and the evidence for how much weight assistants give it is still thin. Unconventional Group publishes one because it is cheap, honest and costs nothing if it turns out not to matter, and because a first-party file stating your facts is the lowest-cost defence against being described wrongly.

What format should llms.txt be in?

Plain text written in Markdown: an H1 with the business name, a blockquote summary, H2 sections, and bulleted links with a short description each. Serve it as text/plain or text/markdown at the root of the domain.

Should I block AI crawlers if I publish llms.txt?

No. The file only helps if the systems reading it are allowed to fetch your site. Check robots.txt for rules blocking GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot and similar agents; a security plugin or platform default may have added them.

Can I see a real example?

Unconventional Group's own files are public at unconventionalgroup.ca/llms.txt and unconventionalgroup.ca/llms-full.txt. They state every published price, the limits of what is claimed, and a disambiguation note, which is the pattern to copy.

STRAIGHT ANSWER

WHAT WE CLAIM, AND WHAT WE DO NOT.

Clients typically see movement in 14 to 90 days, measured against a baseline we capture before the work starts. This is a typical-results claim, not a guarantee.

We do not offer performance guarantees, we do not promise a specific ranking or a specific number of leads, and there is no “we keep going until it works” clause. What we do instead is measure: a baseline is captured before the work starts, and the same measurements are re-run afterwards, so the change is something you can check rather than something we assert.

RATHER HAVE IT DONE?

A 20-minute call from Edmonton. This guide maps to a published price.

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