Owners and managers are asking us how to quickly show up in the shortlist of results from AI queries. As a follow up to our article in April, we’re going to break down each of the 10 tactics individually over the summer, giving your company the tools needed to DIY. Starting with the lowest-hanging fruit: the llms.txt file.
A proposed web standard called llms.txt works like robots.txt but for AI systems, giving AI models a clean, formatted snapshot of your website’s most important content. It is the most direct technical step you can take to improve AI discoverability.
Every other tactic we recommend creates content and credibility for AI to find. This one tells AI where to look.
If you have been managing your brand website, you already know about robots.txt: the file in your website’s root directory that tells search engine crawlers which pages to index and which to skip. You may also have a sitemap.xml: a structured list of your site’s pages that helps Google understand your site’s architecture and find new content quickly. The llms.txt standard works on a similar principle, but for AI language models instead of traditional search bots. It gives AI systems a clean, structured summary of your website’s most important pages, in a format they are designed to read efficiently.
For a craft beverage producer with a website full of great content, an llms.txt file is the difference between AI having to guess which pages matter and being told directly. That guidance translates into more accurate, more complete brand representations when AI is asked about your company.
Think of it as a briefing document you write for AI. Instead of leaving an AI model to crawl every corner of your site trying to figure out what matters, your llms.txt file says: ‘Here is who we are. Here are our most important pages. Here is what each section of our website covers.’
| The Three Website Files: What Each Does | |
| robots.txt | Tells traditional search crawlers (Googlebot, Bingbot) which pages to index and which to ignore. Has been in use since the mid-1990s. |
| sitemap.xml | Provides a structured map of all your site’s pages to help search engines find and index your content efficiently. |
| llms.txt | A proposed standard giving AI language models a curated, formatted summary of your site’s most important content: brand story, key pages, beverage categories, and events. |
As of 2026, llms.txt is a proposed web standard, formally defined and increasingly supported by AI systems, but not yet universally required or universally read by every AI model (including Google’s Gemini, as this writing). The practical implication: installing an llms.txt file now puts your brand ahead of the curve with the AI systems that already support it, and costs you nothing when the ones that do not catch up.
Creating and uploading your first LLMs.txt file is straightforward! When we first learned of the new protocol we asked AI how to structure it. Since then, tools have been introduced that integrate seamlessly into your WordPress or Shopify websites, as well as freemium services that generate the necessary file based on your publicly available sitemap. Below are the necessary steps for specific use cases and platforms which you can adapt:
- Step 1: Ask your preferred AI model to draft your LLMs.txt file or use a generator tool. The simplest free option is WordLift’s llms.txt generator. You do not need a developer to use these tools.
- Step 2: Enter your website’s homepage URL. AI or the generator will crawl your site from the homepage outward, following internal links to discover your key pages. This process typically takes 30 to 90 seconds for a standard craft beverage website.
- Step 3: Review the output. What’s returned is a structured list of your site’s pages, organized by section and including brief descriptions of each. Review it for accuracy: the process occasionally picks up outdated pages, test pages, or administrative URLs that should not be included. Remove anything that does not represent current, relevant content.
- Step 4: Download the llms.txt file. Save it to your computer. The file is a plain text document with a .txt extension.
- Step 5: Upload to your website’s root directory. See the WordPress and GoDaddy cPanel instructions below.
For producers running WordPress on GoDaddy hosting – the most common setup among Market Your Craft clients – here is exactly how to upload your llms.txt file:
- Option A, File Manager (no software required): Log into your GoDaddy account and navigate to cPanel (typically found under Web Hosting > Manage > cPanel Admin). In cPanel, open File Manager. Navigate to public_html: this is your website’s root directory, the same folder where your wp-config.php file lives. Click Upload in the top toolbar and select your llms.txt file. Once uploaded, verify it is accessible by typing yourdomain.com/llms.txt into a browser. You should see a plain text file with your site’s structured content listed.
- Option B, FTP client: Connect to your hosting server using an FTP client like FileZilla, using the credentials found in your GoDaddy hosting panel under FTP Accounts. Navigate to public_html and upload llms.txt there. Verify accessibility the same way as Option A.While your website setup may not exactly mirror the above, the steps generally will guide you and your team through a similar process of uploading your LLMs.txt file to your website’s root directory. View Market Your Craft’s LLMs.txt file as an example.
How often should you update your LLMs.txt file?
Your llms.txt file is a snapshot of your website at the time it was generated. As you add pages, update your events calendar, launch new products, or make significant structural changes to your site, that snapshot becomes outdated. A general guideline: regenerate and re-upload your llms.txt file any time you make a significant structural change to your site. For most craft beverage producers, this means updating it two to four times per year. Set a calendar reminder. Once the process is familiar, it takes less than five minutes.
What happens when AI crawls a site without an llms.txt file? It still crawls, following your navigation, reading your content, assessing your brand. But without the file, AI must make its own decisions about what is most important and how your content is organized. An llms.txt file does not guarantee perfect AI representation. It meaningfully increases the accuracy of AI’s understanding of your brand versus leaving that interpretation entirely to the machine.
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