Does llms.txt help ChatGPT find my business?

An agency's AI SEO package lists "llms.txt setup". Or you read online that one small file will get your kedai into ChatGPT. Probably not on its own: no AI search company we checked says its crawler reads llms.txt to find businesses, and in four and a half days of our server logs, ChatGPT's crawlers didn't ask for it.

In our server logs for the last week of September, AI and search crawlers made 348 requests to easyfound.co. Not one of them was for our llms.txt.

What is llms.txt, and why are Malaysian businesses told to add one?

llms.txt is a plain-text file at yoursite.com/llms.txt that summarises a website for AI tools. Jeremy Howard proposed it in 2024: "We propose adding a /llms.txt markdown file to websites to provide LLM-friendly content"¹. It is a proposal, not a standard that OpenAI or Google says its search follows.

In Malaysia it's starting to appear in packages. One local AI SEO package we read lists "llms.txt setup" beside schema and content work. A popular WordPress SEO plugin, Rank Math, can generate the file automatically. Two of the Malaysian sites we checked got their file that way.

Does ChatGPT read llms.txt?

ChatGPT doesn't appear to read llms.txt when it searches the web for businesses: OpenAI's official guide to its crawlers doesn't say they read the file. The guide says "OAI-SearchBot is used to surface websites in search results in ChatGPT's search features"², and it explains how to control that crawler with robots.txt. Perplexity's crawler guide likewise covers robots.txt and firewall settings, and doesn't say its crawlers read llms.txt⁴.

Ask ChatGPT whether llms.txt helps and you may hear otherwise. We put this article's question to ChatGPT's model three times through OpenAI's API: the two answers that skipped searching said it might help a little, and the one that searched said probably not.

Did ChatGPT's crawlers ask for the llms.txt on our website?

ChatGPT's crawlers didn't ask for the llms.txt on our website in the last week of September (per-crawler data, CSV). easyfound.co has had an llms.txt since July 2026, and it isn't cached, so every request for it reaches our server.

ChatGPT's search crawler read our robots.txt at least 16 times in that window. Anthropic's ClaudeBot fetched our robots.txt and sitemap about every two hours. Neither checked for llms.txt.

Does llms.txt help my business show up in Google's AI Overviews?

Google doesn't use llms.txt for AI Overviews, AI Mode or its regular results, so the file won't help your business show up there. Google's own guide to generative AI in Search lists "LLMS.txt files and other 'special' markup" among the things site owners can ignore³.

The same guide says an llms.txt file "will neither harm nor help your site's visibility or rankings in Google Search, as Google Search ignores them". Chrome's Lighthouse tool does check for the file as part of its "agentic browsing checks"¹, but that is about AI browsing agents, not Google Search.

Do the websites ChatGPT cites in Malaysia have an llms.txt?

Most websites ChatGPT cited for Malaysian questions in our test don't have an llms.txt. We checked the sites it cited when we asked Malaysian buying questions about hotels, renovation, solar, accounting and company secretarial work. About three in four had no llms.txt at all, and ChatGPT cited them anyway.

Across the Malaysian (.my) websites we checked, about one in five had the file. Where a cited site did have one, we can't tell whether it made any difference.

Do I need an llms.txt on my business website at all?

A business website doesn't need an llms.txt, but adding one is fine if it costs you nothing. It takes minutes, and Google says it's "completely fine" to keep one for other systems³. Its author describes AI agents reading these files, and says the AI labs "publish llms.txt files for their own developer docs"¹.

His examples are mostly developer documentation, not a customer asking ChatGPT for a tuition centre in Subang. We keep one on easyfound.co ourselves. It just shouldn't be the line item you're paying for.

What can't our llms.txt check tell you?

• Our site is small and new. Four and a half days of logs is a short window, and a busier site might see crawlers behave differently.
• On-demand visits were too rare to test. The proposal says llms.txt is read when an assistant fetches pages for a user's question, and ChatGPT and Claude made almost no such visits to our site. Crawlers also change, so we'll re-run this check.
• Having a file isn't proof of effect. We counted which sites have llms.txt, not whether it changed their citations.

What should I do instead of llms.txt so ChatGPT can find my business?

On the evidence we have, two free things you control do more to help ChatGPT find your business than llms.txt: letting its search crawler in, and giving it plain facts to quote.

1. Request EasyFound's free check. See what ChatGPT says about your business today, then go through it with us on a free call.
2. Let OAI-SearchBot in. Check your robots.txt and any Cloudflare bot setting; our five checks for when ChatGPT can't see your website walk through it.
3. Write your key facts on ordinary pages. Services, areas such as Klang or Seremban, rough prices, and hours, including Raya and Chinese New Year hours.
4. Start in English, then add Malay or Chinese where your customers use it. ChatGPT mostly searched in English even for Malay and Chinese questions.
5. If you want an llms.txt, add it yourself. A plugin or a short text file will do.

EasyFound is an AI SEO service for Malaysian businesses. We check what six AI tools say about you in English, Malay and Chinese, then work on the pages those tools draw on. Start with the free check below.