Organic search traffic is dropping fast. Google’s AI Overviews now answer search questions directly on the results page, cutting out the click. Reports show traffic losses between 15% and 64%, depending on the category and query type. Zero-click searches—where users get what they need without leaving the search page—now account for as much as 58% of all queries. It’s no exaggeration: The traditional search funnel is breaking down.

The result? Slower growth. Stalled demand. Teams are rethinking how they show up online—redesigning the consumer journey without the traffic they used to count on.

One immediate shift is to engineer how your content appears in AI overviews. For us, that means implementing the LLMS.TXT file—a new open standard designed to help AI models make sense of your site. Created by Jeremy Howard of Answer.AI, LLMS.TXT lives in the root directory of your site and points large language models to the content you want them to understand and reference.

Here’s what it does:

• Generates a human-friendly summary along with organized Markdown-formatted links

• Gives AI a clear, structured overview of what your site is and why it matters

• Guides LLMs to the pages and documents that are most useful

• Keeps your content in the mix when models pull citations

Think of it as a curated set of pages provided to AI in a format that is easier to read and understand.

Webpages are often bloated with ad tech, tracking scripts, and poorly structured HTML—making it harder for AI to parse what matters. LLMS.TXT cuts through that noise. It clarifies permissions. It directs models to the most relevant content. It improves how your site is read, summarized, and referenced in AI outputs.

To build one, head to llmstxt-generator.org—a free tool that walks you through what to include and how to format it.

Want to see who else is using it? llmstxt-check.com lets you see which sites have deployed LLMS.TXT and which haven’t.

It’s a small file with big leverage. Until the LLM citation journey gets sorted, this is one of the few direct ways to influence how your content shows up in AI responses. If you care about staying relevant while traffic reroutes around you, LLMS.TXT is an “at once” move worth making now.

This is just one tactic in the game of generative engine optimization (GEO) and as paid placements begin appearing in AI citations and new techniques emerge for optimizing content for LLMs, our playbook is growing rapidly. Connect with us for our POV on how you can evolve your search journey in this AI-first world and how we can help.