Growth · GEO and AI visibility · 03
llms.txt and machine-readable indexes
llms.txt and machine-readable indexes give answer engines and crawlers a clean, maintained map of what the site contains and what matters most: an llms.txt that describes the organization and its key pages, an llms-full.txt that lists every page with a one-line description, sitemaps split by section with honest modification dates, an RSS feed for new content, and canonical hygiene that removes duplicates. They are needed when a site has grown beyond what a crawler will discover on its own, when AI crawlers are known to arrive but citations do not follow, when sitemaps are stale or monolithic, or when a GEO program is being set up. The work produces the files, generated from the build so they never drift, validated and submitted where submission is possible.
Scope
What the review covers.
- llms.txt structure and the pages it should feature
- llms-full.txt generation from the page inventory
- Sitemap index with per-section sitemaps and real modification dates
- RSS or Atom feed for new and revised content
- Canonical, redirect and duplicate hygiene
- Generation from the build and validation on each release
Deliverables
What you receive.
| Deliverable | Form |
|---|---|
| llms.txt and llms-full.txt | Generated and maintained |
| Sitemap set | Index plus sections, validated |
| Feed | For new and revised content |
| Hygiene report | Canonicals, redirects and duplicates resolved |
Prerequisites
What we need from you.
- Access to the site build or content system
- The page inventory with titles and descriptions
- Search Console and webmaster tool access for submission
Related
Where this sits.
- GEO and AI visibility Service
- Growth Hub
- Crawl and render readiness Also
- Prompt share-of-voice tracking Also
By David Selakovic · Published 2026-10-16 · Revised 2026-10-16 · Reviewed every 180 days
Questions
Asked before engaging.
Do engines actually read llms.txt?
Adoption varies by engine and changes over time. The file costs little, is harmless when ignored, and is read by several retrieval systems. The sitemaps and feed are read by all of them.
Why split sitemaps by section?
Crawl diagnostics become readable, and large sections can be refreshed without resubmitting everything.
Can this be done on a CMS site?
Yes, with more effort. Static builds generate these files from the content directly, which is why we build that way. See Web design and build.