How to get more leads and traffic from ChatGPT and Google

A file on your site called robots.txt tells crawlers what they may read. Many sites refuse AI crawlers without the owner knowing, because a rule written years ago blocks everything it does not recognise.

Type your site address into a browser and add /robots.txt at the end, like yoursite.com/robots.txt. You will see a plain text file. Look for these names: GPTBot, PerplexityBot, ClaudeBot, Google-Extended. If any of them is followed by a line that says "Disallow: /", that AI cannot read your site. If you see "User-agent: *" followed by "Disallow: /", nothing can read it.

Remove the Disallow line under any AI crawler you want to allow, or change it to "Disallow:" with nothing after the colon. Where you do that depends on your platform:

• WordPress: if you use Yoast or Rank Math, both have a file editor under their Tools menu. If not, your hosting control panel has a file manager; the file sits in your site's main folder.
• Shopify: Online Store, Themes, Edit code, then add or open the robots.txt.liquid template.
• Wix: your site dashboard, SEO & GEO, Tools and settings, Robots.txt Editor.
• Squarespace: you cannot edit the file directly. Go to Settings, Crawlers, and make sure the box that excludes AI crawlers is not checked.

Whether your words arrive as text a machine can read, or are locked inside images, slideshows and scripts that only a browser can display.

Right-click on your homepage and choose "View page source." Press Ctrl+F (Cmd+F on a Mac) and search for a sentence from your page, such as your opening line. If it is there, a machine can read it. If your services, prices or opening line are nowhere in the source, they are inside an image or loaded by a script, and a machine reads a blank page.

Put every fact that matters in ordinary text on the page: your services, what you charge, where you are, when you are open. Keep the images. Add the text under or beside them.

Whether your name, address, phone number and hours are the same on your site, on your Google Business Profile and in directories. Listings act as independent confirmation. When your name, address or phone number differ across directories, the engines see a conflict and may name a competitor whose details match.

Open three tabs: your site's contact page, your Google Business Profile (search your business name on Google and click "Edit profile" if you own it), and one directory that lists you, such as Yelp or the Yellow Pages. Compare four things line by line: exact spelling of the name, the street address, the phone number, the hours. One suite number missing, one old phone number, one "Ltd" on one and not the other, is a difference.

Pick one version and make the other two match it. Google Business Profile is edited from the profile itself. Directories each have their own "claim this listing" or "suggest an edit" link.

Whether there is a way to do business that a machine can hand to its user: a phone number that dials, an email link, a booking link.

On your phone, open your site and tap your phone number. If it dials, it is a real link. If nothing happens, it is just text. Do the same with your email address and your "book now" button.

Make the phone number a link that starts with tel: and the email a link that starts with mailto:. Every platform's editor does this when you highlight the text and choose "add link." If you take bookings, link to the booking page rather than describing how to book.

What llms.txt is

It is an emerging convention for publishing a plain-text guide to a site's most useful content, written for models rather than browsers. It does not grant or deny access. It is a courtesy, not a permission. Adoption is early and no engine treats it as required.

Think of it as a one-page summary of your business, in plain text, at a fixed address, that an AI can read in one go instead of piecing your site together.

What it is not

robots.txt is the access control file. Blanket rules written for older threats routinely refuse GPTBot, PerplexityBot, ClaudeBot and Google-Extended by name, or refuse everything not explicitly permitted. The site owner is almost never aware of it. The two files are widely confused. If robots.txt turns an AI crawler away, no llms.txt will let it back in.

Check whether you already have one

Type your site address and add /llms.txt, like yoursite.com/llms.txt. If you see plain text describing your business, you have one. If you see an error page, you do not.

How to write one, if you want to

Open a plain text editor (Notepad on Windows, TextEdit on a Mac set to plain text) and write:

1. 1.Your business name as a heading, with one sentence saying what you do and where.
2. 2.A short paragraph: who you serve, what you sell, how to reach you.
3. 3.A list of your most useful pages, one per line, each as a full address followed by a colon and a few words on what is there. Five to ten pages is plenty.

Keep it true and keep it current. A guide that points to pages you no longer have is worse than none. Save it as llms.txt.

Where to put it

It has to live at the root of your site, the same place as robots.txt.

• WordPress: upload it with your host's file manager into the same folder as wp-config.php, or use a plugin that publishes an llms.txt (several SEO plugins now do).
• Shopify: there is no root file upload; the practical route is a page at /pages/llms and a redirect from /llms.txt to it, set under Online Store, Navigation, URL redirects.
• Wix and Squarespace: neither lets you place a file at the root today. Skip it. It is a courtesy and its absence blocks nothing.