SEO

GitBook handles most SEO automatically. Published sites are responsive, pre-rendered, and served via a global CDN, with little configuration needed from you.

What GitBook does automatically

Responsive design

Published content adapts to any screen size — phones, tablets, and desktops.

URLs and metadata

• Page URLs are based on the page title by default, but can be customized.
• Canonical URLs prevent duplicate content issues.
• HTML and Open Graph titles pull from the page and site title.
• Meta and Open Graph descriptions pull from the page description.
• Images support alt text, which helps both search engines and accessibility.
• HTML is pre-rendered server-side, so crawlers don't need JavaScript to index your content.

GitBook doesn't generate keyword meta tags. Modern search engines don't use them for ranking — Google confirmed this in 2009.

Sitemaps

GitBook automatically generates a sitemap for any published site that isn't set to unlisted. To find it, append /sitemap-pages.xml to your site's home URL — for example, gitbook.com/docs/sitemap-pages.xml.

CDN and caching

All published content is cached and served via a global CDN. Faster load times improve both user experience and search rankings.

What you can do

Set a custom domain

A custom domain like docs.example.com can improve search visibility compared to a yourorganization.gitbook.io subdomain. Set up a custom domain →

Improve indexing speed

GitBook has no control over how quickly search engines index your content, but two things can help:

1. Link to your site from pages that are already indexed. When Google re-crawls those pages, it's more likely to discover your site.
2. Submit your site to Google directly. This requires a custom domain and ownership verification via a TXT DNS record. Submit your site to Google →

Set up redirects

Moving content to GitBook or restructuring your site can break existing links and affect SEO. Set up redirects → to forward old URLs to new ones.

When you move or rename a page, GitBook automatically creates an HTTP 301 redirect from the old URL to the new one. Learn more about automatic redirects →