NotionCue
AI Visibility Platform
All systems live
Sign in →
AEO GuideCluster Mapllms.txt GeneratorRobots.txt GeneratorBLUF TemplatesBlogChangelogAboutPrivacyTermsContact
Free Tool

llms.txt
Live Validator

Enter any domain and live-fetch their actual llms.txt. Validates format, checks every major AI bot declaration, and flags conflicts with robots.txt — for your own site or any competitor.

How to use this tool

Three things you can do
with this validator.

🔍
Audit your own site
After deploying a new or updated llms.txt, run the validator to confirm the file is live, correctly formatted, and that there are no robots.txt conflicts that would nullify its bot declarations.
🔎
Check competitors
Enter any competitor domain to see their AI bot configuration. A competitor with a broken llms.txt or blocking robots.txt rule is effectively invisible to AI engines — that's a citation gap you can fill.
⚠️
Diagnose missing citations
If your domain has good AEO scores but low actual citation rates, a conflict between llms.txt and robots.txt is one of the most common silent causes. The validator surfaces these mismatches with a specific fix for each.
What is llms.txt

The standard that tells AI
what it's allowed to read.

llms.txt is an emerging specification, analogous to robots.txt, that gives website owners a structured way to declare their content's availability for AI training, retrieval, and citation. Where robots.txt controls crawl access at the page level, llms.txt operates at the intent level — telling AI systems what the site is, what it covers, and how its content should be used.

The file lives at the root of your domain, is plain text, and follows a simple key-value format. A well-formed llms.txt includes the site name, a description of what the site covers, contact information, and per-bot Allow or Disallow declarations. Engines that support llms.txt — including GPTBot and PerplexityBot — check for the file before indexing content.

Sites with a correctly formatted llms.txt consistently show higher citation rates than comparable sites without one — the signal it sends about technical AEO maturity compounds over time. Generate one free with the llms.txt Generator.

yourdomain.com/llms.txt — correct format
# llms.txt

Name: Your Brand
Description: What your site covers
Contact: [email protected]

User-agent: GPTBot
Allow: /

User-agent: PerplexityBot
Allow: /

User-agent: ClaudeBot
Allow: /

User-agent: Google-Extended
Allow: /

User-agent: Grok-Bot
Allow: /
Most common conflict (and fix)

llms.txt says Allow: GPTBot but robots.txt has Disallow: / for all agents.

Fix: add explicit User-agent: GPTBot / Allow: / block in robots.txt above the wildcard rule.

llms.txt vs robots.txt

Two files. Different jobs.
Both required for full AEO coverage.

Many SEO professionals assume that allowing AI bots in robots.txt is sufficient. It isn't. llms.txt and robots.txt serve different purposes and both are needed for a complete AI visibility configuration.

robots.txt — Access control
Controls whether a bot can crawl your pages at all
Applies at the URL / path level
Must not block GPTBot, PerplexityBot, ClaudeBot, Grok-Bot
Takes precedence over llms.txt when there's a conflict
Standard — every bot respects it
Does not tell AI what your site is about
llms.txt — Intent declaration
Declares what your site is and what it covers
Operates at the site level, not URL level
Tells AI systems how to categorise and cite you
Can be overridden by robots.txt (access trumps intent)
Emerging standard — not all bots support it yet
Adds topical authority signal for AEO scoring
Correct setup = both files configured
Generate robots.txt →Generate llms.txt →
The 8 AI bots we check

Each bot has a different role
in the citation pipeline.

GP
GPTBot
ChatGPT
Critical
OpenAI's primary crawler. Blocking GPTBot means ChatGPT cannot include your content in browse-mode or retrieval responses. The highest-priority bot to allow.
Pe
PerplexityBot
Perplexity
Critical
Perplexity fetches live content for every answer. Near-real-time indexing — fixing access here shows the fastest citation results.
Cl
ClaudeBot
Anthropic Claude
High
Anthropic's crawler for Browsing and citation. Distinct from CCBot which is training-only. Increasingly used for research queries.
Go
Google-Extended
Gemini / AI Overviews
High
Google's AI training crawler. Distinct from Googlebot — blocking this while allowing Googlebot is a common and impactful misconfiguration.
Gr
Grok-Bot
Grok (xAI)
High
xAI's crawler for Grok citation. Often missing from legacy llms.txt files written before mid-2024.
Am
Amazonbot
Alexa / Kendra
Medium
Powers Amazon Kendra enterprise search and Alexa voice answers.
Fa
FacebookBot
Meta AI
Medium
Meta's crawler for training AI systems across Facebook and Instagram.
CC
CCBot
Common Crawl
Low
Feeds multiple open-weight models. Blocking this doesn't prevent live citations but may affect future model training.
When to run the validator

Four situations that need
an immediate validation check.

Before or after site launch
Confirm llms.txt is live and correctly formatted before launch day. A 404 on /llms.txt is easy to miss in pre-launch QA and leaves the site invisible to AI crawlers from day one.
After a CMS or hosting migration
Platform migrations often break root-level files. llms.txt and robots.txt are both easy to lose — validate both immediately after any significant site infrastructure change.
When citation rates suddenly drop
If your AI citation rate drops with no obvious content changes, a broken llms.txt or a new robots.txt rule blocking AI bots is one of the first places to check.
Competitive intelligence
Knowing a competitor has blocked GPTBot while you have it allowed is actionable data. Their ChatGPT citations decline; yours fill the gap if your content is strong enough.
Complete your technical AEO setup

Tools to use alongside
the validator.

llms.txt Generator
Build a correctly formatted llms.txt from scratch
Robots.txt Generator
Configure AI crawler access in robots.txt
AI Visibility Checker
Full AEO score across 6 LLMs
Schema Generator
Add structured data to key pages
AI Visibility Heatmap
Map all pages by citation potential
E-E-A-T Checker
Score authority signals across all pillars
Further reading

llms.txt and technical AEO
from the Notion Cue blog.

llms.txt: the complete implementation guide for 2026robots.txt for AI crawlers: what changed in 2025Why 94% of AI-cited pages have structured dataThe technical AEO checklist: 12 fixes before you publish
FAQ

Common questions.

What is llms.txt and why does it matter for AEO?
What's the difference between this validator and the llms.txt generator?
Which AI bots does the validator check?
What does a conflict between llms.txt and robots.txt mean?
Can I use this to audit competitor sites?
What happens if a domain has no llms.txt at all?