SEO basics

llms.txt for WordPress: what it is, whether it works, and how to add it

13 October 2026 · 2 min read

What an llms.txt file is, what AI assistants do with it (and what nobody can promise), what to put in it, and how to publish one on WordPress in a few minutes.

AI assistants such as ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity and Gemini read the web to answer questions. An llms.txt file is a small Markdown file at the root of your site (yoursite.com/llms.txt) that tells them, in plain words, who you are and which pages matter most. The idea was proposed in 2024 and is now offered by some SEO plugins.

Does it work?

Honestly: nobody can promise it. No AI provider guarantees that it reads the file, and the file does not change your Google rankings. What it does is give crawlers that do look for it a clean, short summary instead of making them guess from your menus. It costs nothing and cannot hurt, so it is worth having, but do not expect it to do the work that clear, quotable pages do.

What goes in it

• A one-line summary of the site: who you are and what you cover.
• A short list of your best pages with a one-line description each.
• Optionally, notes on your audience, how to cite you and what you do not cover.

A longer companion, llms-full.txt, can hold the full text of your top articles in one file. Some sites also publish a Markdown copy of each page (your-post.md) so an assistant can read the page without the theme around it.

How to add it on WordPress

You can write the file by hand and upload it, but it goes stale the day you publish something new. OnlyAI SEO builds it for you and keeps it fresh:

1. Open OnlyAI SEO, AI Visibility.
2. Keep llms.txt, llms-full.txt and Markdown copy of every post on.
3. Write the One-line summary. It is the first thing an assistant reads about your site.
4. Press Test llms.txt to see the live file.

Only published, unprotected posts that are not marked noindex are included. The full steps cover the crawler rules too.

Decide which AI crawlers may read you

Separately from llms.txt, your robots.txt decides which crawlers may fetch your pages. There are two groups. Answer engines decide whether you are cited in answers: blocking them means you will be cited less. Training crawlers collect text to train models: blocking them does not affect Google or Bing rankings. OnlyAI SEO lets you tick the ones to block, and checks the result before saving (robots.txt the safe way).

What actually makes a page quotable

• A clear definition or answer near the top.
• Numbers with a source, and facts a reader can check.
• Question-style headings followed by a short, direct answer.
• Lists and tables where the content is a list or a comparison.

The AI Search tab in the editor sidebar checks these per post, and the AI Visibility agent names the high-earning posts that are hardest to quote. You can also try the free SEO score checker, which includes an AI-readiness score.