LLM-friendly links

Q: What counts as an LLM-friendly link?

A link whose URL path ends in .md or .txt (query and fragment ignored, any letter case), or a link to a page that declares a markdown version with rel="alternate" type="text/markdown" in its or an HTTP Link: header. The score is the share of your links, in every section including ## Optional, that qualify.

Q: Which markdown URL form should I link: page.md or page.html.md?

Either. llms.txt v2 accepts .md appended (page.html.md) or the extension replaced (page.md), with index.html.md or index.md for URLs without a file name; all of them end in .md, so all count. What matters is that the URL really serves markdown, which Markdown versions checks on a sample of your links.

Links point to LLM-friendly content

In short: Serve a markdown version of each page you link and link the .md URL, or declare it on the page with rel="alternate" type="text/markdown".

Category: Curation Quality · weight 20 of 100 within the category
Curation Quality is worth 25 in generic and commerce, 20 in regulated and technical (points of 100, by scoring profile)
Audit ID C8 (as shown on reports) · rubric v2.1

What it checks

The share of the file’s links that point to LLM-friendly content: markdown or plain text rather than an HTML page.

Why it matters

llms.txt v2 expects agents to read the file and then follow its links, so the links “should point to LLM-friendly content”. A markdown page costs an agent a fraction of the tokens of the same page in HTML, with no navigation, scripts or layout to strip.

When it applies

Applies when the file has links. A file with no links is Not applicable here.

An audit that doesn't apply, or that we couldn't verify, is removed from your score and its weight shared among the Curation Quality audits that do apply. It is never scored as a zero.

How it's scored

= the share of the file’s links (all sections, ## Optional included) whose path ends in .md or .txt (query and fragment ignored), or whose page declares a markdown alternate with rel="alternate" type="text/markdown" in its <head> or Link: header.

How to fix

Serve a markdown version of each page you link (page.md or page.html.md) and link that version from the file.
If you’d rather link the HTML page, declare its markdown version with <link rel="alternate" type="text/markdown" href="…">, or the same in a Link: header.
Docs platforms such as Mintlify and GitBook can publish the markdown versions for you.

Example

- [Refunds API](https://acme.com/docs/refunds.md): Create, list and cancel refunds

Frequently asked questions

What counts as an LLM-friendly link?

A link whose URL path ends in .md or .txt (query and fragment ignored, any letter case), or a link to a page that declares a markdown version with rel="alternate" type="text/markdown" in its <head> or an HTTP Link: header. The score is the share of your links, in every section including ## Optional, that qualify.

Sources: LLMSRank — LLM-friendly links audit · llmstxt.org — The /llms.txt file, v2 · RFC 8288 — Web Linking (the HTTP Link header)

Which markdown URL form should I link: page.md or page.html.md?

Either. llms.txt v2 accepts .md appended (page.html.md) or the extension replaced (page.md), with index.html.md or index.md for URLs without a file name; all of them end in .md, so all count. What matters is that the URL really serves markdown, which Markdown versions checks on a sample of your links.

Sources: llmstxt.org — The /llms.txt file, v2 · LLMSRank — Markdown versions audit · LLMSRank — Markdown page versions and link relations

Can I link my HTML pages and still score well on LLM-friendly links?

Partly. A page that declares its markdown alternate counts, but we only see declarations on your homepage and the pages we sample (up to 3); every other link has to end in .md or .txt itself. Linking the markdown URLs directly is the reliable route to full marks, and declaring the alternates as well helps Link relations.

Sources: LLMSRank — LLM-friendly links audit · LLMSRank — Markdown page versions and link relations

Why does LLM-friendly links carry the most weight in Curation?

Because llms.txt v2 makes it a property of the file’s links: in its model an agent reads the file and follows the links, so “the links in an llms.txt file should therefore point to LLM-friendly content, such as the markdown versions of pages”. Rubric v2.0 gives it 20 of the Curation category’s 100 points, the largest single weight there (Signal-to-noise and Link descriptions carry 16 each).

Sources: llmstxt.org — The /llms.txt file, v2 · LLMSRank — Method

How many llms.txt files link to markdown?

In our research, 174 of the 187 sites in our corpus (captured 2026-10-10, scored with rubric v2.1) had links to score (declared alternates read from pages captured 2026-09-29); only 20 (11.5%) earned full marks, and 48.9% scored zero, with no link to markdown or text and no declared alternate. The mean was 0.311. netlify.com, docs.expo.dev, twilio.com, qdrant.tech and docs.poolside.ai link markdown versions throughout.

Sources: LLMSRank — Method · LLMSRank — LLM-friendly links audit