Does your online store need llms.txt?

If you look into AI visibility you soon come across llms.txt, usually with the message that you really must have it. The honest answer is less certain, and we think it is more useful to just say so.

What it is

llms.txt is a text file you put on your website, just like robots.txt. In plain language it says what your site is, which pages matter most and where an AI assistant should start reading. The idea is that an assistant then does not have to guess what is important.

What it does

It takes you half an hour and it does no harm. It also forces you to write down in two paragraphs what you sell and to whom, and that is a useful exercise in itself. Many stores are surprisingly bad at answering that question.

What it does not do

It is not an official standard that all assistants follow, and there is no guarantee it gets read. Anyone who promises that llms.txt will get you into AI answers is promising something they cannot deliver.

The foundation underneath matters more. Does your site let AI crawlers in? Is your text in the page itself, or is it only built up later? Can a machine see what a product is and what it costs? If something goes wrong there, an llms.txt does not change that.

The order we would follow

First check whether crawlers are allowed in. Then check whether your most important text can be read directly. Then make your product information machine-readable. Then a good FAQ section. And only then, as a bonus, llms.txt.

On krilloai.com we check all 13 points for free, and llms.txt is one of them. You see straight away which of them will do the most for you, instead of starting with whichever point happens to get written about the most.