# Tools & Protocols

> Protocols and files that sites publish for crawlers and AI systems — sitemaps, IndexNow, llms.txt — and what each one is documented to do.

- URL: https://geo.casa/tools-protocols/
- Hub
- Reviewed: 2026-10-26

Protocols in this section fall into two groups: **adopted standards** that search engines document support for (XML sitemaps, IndexNow on participating engines), and **proposals** that no major search platform documents using (llms.txt). Entries say which is which.

Start with [XML sitemaps vs IndexNow](https://geo.casa/tools-protocols/sitemaps-vs-indexnow/), then read the claim checks on [Claim: llms.txt improves AI search visibility](https://geo.casa/tools-protocols/llms-txt/) and on [Claim: The Indexing API gets any page indexed fast](https://geo.casa/tools-protocols/indexing-api/), which covers what Google's Indexing API is actually for.

## Sources

- [sitemaps.org: Sitemaps XML format](https://www.sitemaps.org/protocol.html)
- [IndexNow.org: IndexNow documentation](https://www.indexnow.org/documentation)
- [llmstxt.org: The /llms.txt file](https://llmstxt.org/)