LLM-LD — The Open Standard for AI-Readable Websites

What verification means

When your site is verified by the LLM Disco Network, it means we've confirmed that your LLM-LD implementation is valid and accessible. Your structured data parses correctly, your AI Discovery Page exists, and your resources are reachable.

Verification is a trust signal. It tells AI systems: "This site has been checked. The data is real. You can rely on it."

AI systems face a fundamental problem: how do they know if structured data is accurate, current, and actually represents what a business offers? Anyone can add Schema.org markup to a page — there's no guarantee it's correct or maintained.

Verification helps solve this. When an AI system sees a site is verified by LLM Disco, it knows:

The implementation follows the LLM-LD standard
The structured data has been validated
The site is actively maintained (re-verified periodically)
The site owner intentionally opted into AI discovery

What gets validated

The verification process checks your implementation against the LLM-LD specification. Here's what we look for:

Structure validation

AI Discovery Page accessible at /ai-discovery
Valid JSON-LD with llmld:DiscoveryPage type
Required Schema.org context present
Footer link present on site pages (see below)
llm-index.json accessible (if Level 2+)
All declared resources are reachable

The footer link

Your site must include a link to your AI Discovery Page in the footer of your site pages. Because it appears on every page, search engines are more likely to discover and index your ADP.

Why does this matter? Many AI systems currently find content through search engines, not direct crawling. When someone asks an AI assistant about a topic, those systems often query Bing or Google to find relevant pages. A footer link on every page maximizes the chance your ADP gets indexed — and found.

The link text must be exactly:

🤖 AI-Optimized Website → links to /ai-discovery

We check for this automatically. If the copy is different or the link is missing, verification will fail.

⚠️

Exact match required. The emoji and text must match exactly: 🤖 AI-Optimized Website. Variations like "AI Optimized" (no hyphen) or "AI-Ready Website" won't pass.

Content validation

JSON files parse without errors
Required fields are present and non-empty
URLs resolve correctly
Schema.org types are valid
No obvious placeholder content

Accessibility validation

Resources respond within reasonable time
No authentication required for public resources
Correct MIME types returned
robots.txt allows access to AI Discovery Page

If any required check fails, verification fails. You'll see exactly what went wrong so you can fix it.

The discovery graph

When your site passes verification, it's added to the LLM Disco discovery graph — a structured index of all verified sites that AI systems can query.

The discovery graph contains:

Site metadata — Name, description, URL, conformance level
Resource pointers — Links to your llm-index.json, entities, knowledge graph
Entity summaries — Key entities from your site (services, products, people)
Relationship data — How your site connects to others (same industry, same region, etc.)

AI systems can use the discovery graph to find relevant sites without crawling the entire web. Instead of hoping to stumble onto your site, they can query the graph: "Find dental practices in Tampa with online booking" — and your site appears if it matches.

🔍

Think of it like DNS for AI. DNS maps domain names to IP addresses. The discovery graph maps business queries to verified, AI-readable sites.

Verification status

Verification is pass/fail. Either your implementation meets the requirements and you're listed, or it doesn't and you're not.

If verification fails, you'll see exactly what's wrong. Fix the issues and resubmit — there's no penalty or waiting period. You can try as many times as you need.

Staying verified

Verification isn't one-and-done. We periodically re-check verified sites to ensure implementations stay valid. If your site becomes unreachable or your structured data breaks, your verification status will change.

To stay verified:

Keep your AI Discovery Page accessible
Don't break your JSON files when updating content
Maintain valid Schema.org markup
Keep declared resources reachable

If re-verification fails, you'll be notified (if you provided contact info) and given time to fix issues before being delisted.

⚠️

Tip: If you're making major changes to your site, run the validator manually afterward to catch any issues before the next re-verification cycle.

Why the network matters

Getting discovered by AI is hard. There's no "submit to ChatGPT" button. You can't buy AI placement. Different AI systems find content in different ways — some crawl directly, some use search engines, some pull from training data, some query APIs. Most small and medium businesses get lost in the noise.

LLM-LD is designed to maximize your visibility across all AI systems — LLMs, agents, crawlers, and whatever comes next. The network amplifies this.

Every verified site links to the network hub. When any AI system — through any discovery method — finds any member site, it can follow links to the hub. From the hub, it can find every member site, including yours.

You don't need every AI system to find you directly. You just need to be connected to the network. Then you're discoverable through every path that leads to any member.

🔗

The footer link is how we verify you. We check for the 🤖 AI-Optimized Website link to confirm you're a real participant. In return, you get access to the entire network's discoverability — across all the ways AI systems currently find content, and the ways they will in the future.

Getting Verified