Why Some Sites Are Invisible Without JavaScript
Technical meaning. JavaScript is a programming language that runs in your web browser to build parts of a page after it first loads. A page is “readable without JavaScript” when its actual words and content are present in the raw page that arrives first, before any of that extra code runs. In plain English. Some…
Read MoreWhat a Sitemap Is, in Plain English
Technical meaning. A sitemap is a file (usually sitemap.xml) that lists the pages on a website so that search engines and crawlers can find them all. It acts as an index, telling automated visitors what exists and where to find it. In plain English. Imagine a library with no catalog. A visitor might stumble onto…
Read Morellms.txt: The Cheat Sheet You Can Hand an AI
Technical meaning. llms.txt is a plain-text file placed at the root of a website that gives AI language models a concise, curated summary of the site: who or what it is about, the most important pages, and key facts. It is a newer, proposed standard, written specifically for large language models (the “LLM” in the…
Read MoreWhat “AI Crawler Access” Means (and Why robots.txt Decides It)
Technical meaning. A web crawler (also called a bot or spider) is an automated program that visits web pages and reads their content. A small file called robots.txt, kept at the root of a website, tells those crawlers which parts of the site they are allowed to read. “AI crawler access” means crawlers run by…
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