· Digital Estate Media · SEO · 6 min read
llms.txt for Local Business: Template, Example & What to Include
A copy-paste llms.txt template for local service businesses, plus the exact sections ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Claude look for when deciding what to cite. Real working example from digitalestatemedia.com.
AI search engines don’t crawl your website the way Google does. ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, and Google’s own AI Overviews increasingly look for a curated entry point — a single file that tells them what your business is, what you do, and which pages they should cite. That file is llms.txt, served at the root of your domain, and almost no local business has one yet.
This is a copy-paste template plus the exact structure AI search agents parse. At the end of the post we walk through DEM’s own llms.txt line by line so you can see a working example.
What is llms.txt?
llms.txt is a Markdown file served at https://your-domain.com/llms.txt. It lists the most important pages on your site, grouped by theme, with one-line summaries. Large language models read it as a hint about what to cite when a user asks a question related to your business.
Think of it as a sitemap written for humans — and for LLMs, which parse English better than XML.
The spec was proposed at llmstxt.org in late 2024 and has since been adopted as a de-facto standard by Anthropic, Perplexity, and many independent LLM-integrated tools. It’s still evolving, but the sections that matter most are already stable.
Why local businesses should publish one
Three reasons it matters more for a local service business than for a large publisher:
- AI search queries are increasingly local. “Best AI marketing agency in Mississauga” or “Toronto dentist open Saturday” are exactly the kind of questions AI search engines rewrite from vague user prompts. If your site has a clean, structured llms.txt, you’re in the citation pool. If it doesn’t, the AI summarizes whatever it scraped first — which is rarely you.
- Your competitors don’t have one yet. We’ve audited dozens of Ontario service businesses and none of them publish llms.txt. Shipping one today is a 30-minute task that puts you ahead of your entire local market.
- It’s a single source of truth. Want to update what your business offers, your service areas, or your contact info? Edit one file and every AI search agent that reads it picks up the change within days.
What to include
The llms.txt format is deliberately loose — Markdown headings, bullet lists, one-line summaries. Here’s the structure that works best for a local service business:
1. Title + tagline
First line: # Your Business Name. Second line (blockquote): a 2-sentence description starting with “>”. This is the passage most likely to be lifted verbatim by an AI engine. Write it the way you’d want quoted back to a potential customer.
2. About
Links to your About, Reviews, Projects/Case Studies, and Blog pages. One line each. Focus on trust signals.
3. Services
One line per service with a descriptive summary. Don’t just list services — describe what they do for the customer. AI engines cite the description, not the headline.
4. Locations / Service Areas
Critical for local businesses. List every city or neighbourhood you serve, with a link to the landing page if you have one.
5. Contact
Phone, email, physical location. These are the signals that turn an AI citation into an actual conversion.
6. Policies
Privacy, terms, accessibility. AI search engines treat these as trust markers.
Copy-paste template
Drop this in a new file at public/llms.txt (or the equivalent in your CMS), swap the placeholders, and deploy:
# [Your Business Name]
> [One- or two-sentence description. Lead with what you do and who you serve.
> Example: "A Mississauga-based AI marketing agency building Google Ads,
> SEO, and email systems for Ontario businesses."]
## About
- [About Us](https://your-domain.com/about): [One-line summary of your founding story and approach.]
- [Reviews](https://your-domain.com/reviews): [What clients say — lead with the strongest proof.]
- [Case Studies](https://your-domain.com/projects): [Real outcomes, anonymized if needed.]
- [Blog](https://your-domain.com/blog): [Topical focus of your blog — what will readers learn?]
## Services
- [Service One](https://your-domain.com/services/service-one): [What it does and who it's for.]
- [Service Two](https://your-domain.com/services/service-two): [Ditto.]
- [Service Three](https://your-domain.com/services/service-three): [Ditto.]
## Locations
- [Service areas overview](https://your-domain.com/locations)
- [City 1](https://your-domain.com/locations/city-1)
- [City 2](https://your-domain.com/locations/city-2)
- [City 3](https://your-domain.com/locations/city-3)
## Contact
- Phone: +1-XXX-XXX-XXXX
- Email: hello@your-domain.com
- Location: [City, Province/State, Country]
- Service area: [Regional description — "Ontario" or "Greater Toronto Area"]
## Policies
- [Privacy Policy](https://your-domain.com/privacy)
- [Terms of Service](https://your-domain.com/terms)Keep the whole file under 5KB. Longer is not better — AI agents parse the whole thing into context, and padding dilutes the signal.
Worked example: DEM’s own llms.txt
Our live file at digitalestatemedia.com/llms.txt follows this exact structure. A few specific choices worth calling out:
The blockquote paragraph does the heavy lifting. Ours reads: “AI-powered digital marketing agency in Mississauga, Ontario. DEM builds AI growth systems (Google Ads, SEO, email, social, AI agent calls, VA staffing) for Ontario businesses that want measurable growth without the busywork.” That’s the passage Perplexity will lift if someone asks “what does Digital Estate Media do?”
Services are described, not just listed. Compare “AI SEO” to “AI SEO: AI-assisted SEO strategy, content, and technical optimization”. The second version is what gets cited.
Locations are their own section. We list our service areas overview, then individual city pages. For a local business, this section is often the reason to publish llms.txt in the first place.
Policies are last but not optional. They signal the business is legitimate and well-run.
Common mistakes
- Using it as an SEO sitemap. llms.txt is not a list of every URL on your site. It’s a curated shortlist of the pages you actively want cited. Keep it tight.
- Writing marketing copy in the descriptions. “World-class, cutting-edge, best-in-class” is filler that LLMs strip. Describe what the page does, factually.
- Forgetting to link to locations. For local businesses this is the single biggest miss. AI search rewards geographic specificity.
- Letting it go stale. Review it quarterly. When you launch a new service page, update llms.txt in the same deploy.
The punchline
llms.txt is a tiny file that takes 30 minutes to ship and gives AI search engines exactly what they need to cite you. If you’re a local service business competing in an Ontario market, this is one of the lowest-effort, highest-upside moves you can make in 2026.
If you want the broader framework that sits underneath this tactic, read SEO vs AEO vs GEO: What Your Business Actually Needs. For the related tactic of structured data that AI engines specifically cite, see Schema Markup That AI Search Engines Actually Cite. And if you want someone to implement this for you as part of a broader AI search strategy, that’s exactly what DEM’s AI SEO service does.
