LLMs.txt: Preparing Your Store for AI-Driven Discovery

AI Search Is Changing How Customers Discover Stores

Search is no longer limited to blue links and rankings. Customers increasingly discover products through AI-powered tools that summarize, recommend, and reference content directly. These systems decide what information to read, interpret, and surface before a user ever visits a website.

For merchants, this creates a new visibility layer that operates upstream of traditional SEO.

Why Stores Lose Control in AI-Driven Discovery

Traditional SEO tools were built for search engines. Robots.txt controls crawling. Sitemaps declare URLs. IndexNow accelerates discovery.

AI systems are different.

Large language models and AI crawlers ingest content to build understanding, not just indexes. Without explicit guidance, they infer structure, importance, and context on their own. That inference may be incomplete, outdated, or misaligned with how a store wants to be represented.

Merchants currently have limited ways to declare:

• What content matters most

• How product categories relate

• What the store is actually about

llms.txt as a Storefront Signal for AI

llms.txt is an emerging, publisher-controlled file designed to provide structured context to AI crawlers and AI-powered platforms.

It allows a store to:

• Describe its purpose in plain language

• Expose key product categories

• Point AI systems toward high-value content

This is not about rankings or guarantees. It is about clarity.

llms.txt gives AI systems a deterministic entry point instead of relying entirely on inference.

What Merchants Actually Get

With llms.txt support in the IndexNow app:

• The file is generated automatically

• It stays updated as your store changes

• No configuration is required

• No technical knowledge is needed

• No ongoing maintenance is introduced

The system reflects your store’s structure and content without manual effort.

How It Fits With Existing SEO

llms.txt does not replace SEO.

It operates alongside:

• IndexNow for real-time URL submission

• Bing-based discovery pipelines

• Traditional crawling and indexing workflows

IndexNow handles speed and freshness.
llms.txt provides context and intent.

They solve different problems and reinforce each other.

Future-Readiness Without Speculation

AI-driven discovery is expanding, but standards are still forming. Waiting for certainty means waiting without representation.

llms.txt is low-risk:

• It does not interfere with existing SEO

• It does not require behavioral assumptions

• It does not promise outcomes it cannot control

It simply makes your store easier to understand for systems that increasingly shape how content is discovered.

You can get started today by installing the IndexNow app for BigCommerce, which now includes automatic llms.txt support alongside real-time indexing and ChatGPT product feed generation.