How to Update Your Website for AI Crawlers to Index (or not Index) Your Website Content

How to Update Your Website for AI Crawlers to Index (or not Index) Your Website Content

 

Creating an llms.txt file is increasingly important because AI crawlers used for training large language models gather vast amounts of textual data, including nuanced company information, proprietary text, and potentially sensitive content. Unlike traditional web crawlers that primarily index content for search engines and typically respect robots.txt for simple listing or ranking purposes, AI bots may repurpose your site’s writing for AI-generated outputs and public model responses. This raises new concerns about intellectual property, data privacy, and how your company’s brand or confidential details are represented and reused. By specifying permissions in an llms.txt file, businesses can directly address these advanced risks, helping control how and where their content appears in future AI applications—something robots.txt alone cannot guarantee.

Allowing selective AI indexing of your public content can help position your company as an authority in your industry. When trusted and accurate information from your website is incorporated into large language models, these platforms are more likely to reference your expertise, solutions, and thought leadership in their responses to millions of users. This increased visibility can enhance your brand reputation, attract a wider audience to your resources, and build lasting credibility with both customers and partners looking for reliable insight.

To create an llms.txt file for a company website (e.g., exampleco.com) that manages which parts of your site are allowed or blocked from AI crawlers and large language model (LLM) training, follow these steps:

How to Set Up llms.txt for exampleco.com

1. Decide Which Content You Want Public vs. Private

·      
Public (Allowed): Homepage, services, blog, press releases, or any other marketing/resource pages.

·      
Private (Disallowed): Client portals, sensitive documentation, internal resources, staff-only sections.

 

2. Create the llms.txt File

·      
Open a simple text editor (e.g., Notepad, VS Code).

·      
Add rules for major AI crawlers and a generic rule for unknown AI bots.

Generic Example:

# llms.txt for exampleco.com
# Last updated: YYYY-MM-DD

# Block internal and private content
User-agent: *
Disallow: /clients/
Disallow: /internal/
Disallow: /confidential/

# Allow public content
Allow: /
Allow: /blog/
Allow: /products/
Allow: /services/

# Additional: Specific AI agent names (optional)
User-agent: GPTBot
Disallow: /clients/
Disallow: /internal/
Allow: /

User-agent: ClaudeBot
Disallow: /clients/
Disallow: /internal/
Allow: /

# Note: Update "Disallow" and "Allow" paths as appropriate for your site.

3. Upload the File

·      
Save your file as llms.txt.

·      
Upload it to the root directory of your website:
https://www.exampleco.com/llms.txt

4. Communicate Your Policy

·      
Consider mentioning your policy in your site's Terms of Service or Privacy Policy.

·      
Update the file as your site structure or company policies change.

Key Points

·      
llms.txt is advisory: AI companies may honor it, but legal enforcement requires proper Terms of Service and copyright.

·      
Be deliberate: Only allow what you want public; block anything confidential.

·      
Use clear directory paths.

If you'd like, I can generate a customized sample for your company and goals—just share which sections should be allowed or blocked.


    • Related Articles

    • AI-powered Self-Service with Zoho's ZIA Answer Bot

      Generative AI services currently support 33 languages. Out of these, the Answer Bot feature is available in 27 languages. For a detailed breakdown of the supported languages and associated features, refer to the language support sheet. Zoho is ...

    • AI Prompts for Sales Preparation

      Here are some interesting AI Prompts from Alex Prompter who can be found on X via @alex_prompter Use these 3 mega prompts for different tasks: 1/ The Consultant Framework Prompt: "You are a world-class strategy consultant trained by McKinsey, BCG, ...

    • A Brief Summary of Zoho AI

      Zoho's path for AI is unparalleled in the SAAS industry and has been quietly working for a while: Zia LLM, their very own large language model built completely in-house and running securely on NVIDIA GPUs is located in Zoho’s private data centers. No ...

    • Zoho Campaigns Deliverability Update & Terms of Use Update

      Due to the inherent working of Zoho Campaigns and with the increasing reports of misuse and loss of deliverability, it is vital to keep the Campaigns domain and IP reputation high which ensures that users do not misuse the services and which in turn ...

    • Zoho Campaigns and Marketing Automation Update - August 2021

      Topics and subscription management update: Before getting into the details of this update, here is a refresher on how the current subscription management flow behaves: Zoho Campaigns user experience: While creating a list, users have to provide a ...