Docsbook
Overview

GEO — Generative Engine Optimization

In 2025 a growing share of developers ask Perplexity, ChatGPT Search, Google AI Overviews and Claude instead of typing a query into Google. These engines summarize answers and cite their sources — and the way your docs are structured directly controls whether they get picked.

GEO is the practice of writing and marking up content so that generative engines find it easy to extract, attribute and quote.

What Docsbook does when GEO is enabled#

Toggle GEO on in the admin SEO / GEO tab. Once enabled, every documentation page gets:

TL;DR block at the top#

A short summary is injected right after the H1 as a styled <aside class="tldr"> block. Source order:

  1. If your markdown frontmatter contains an explicit tldr: field — that string is used verbatim (up to 280 characters).
  2. Otherwise — Docsbook extracts the first paragraph after the H1 and truncates it cleanly to fit.

This is the snippet that most AI engines pick when summarizing your page.

Visible last-modified date#

A line like “Updated May 25, 2026” appears at the end of each article, with a proper <time dateTime="..."> element. AI models weight freshness heavily — pages without a visible date often get skipped in favour of dated competitors.

The date comes from the last commit that touched the file in your GitHub repository.

Author attribution as Person schema#

The page's JSON-LD switches author from a generic Organization reference to a full Person object:

{
  "@type": "Person",
  "name": "Jane Doe",
  "url": "https://github.com/janedoe",
  "sameAs": ["https://github.com/janedoe"]
}

Source order: explicit author: and authorUrl: in frontmatter, otherwise the last git author from GitHub.

Semantic HTML#

Article body is wrapped in <article> with descriptive structure. The TL;DR block exposes role="note" for assistive tech and AI parsers alike.

How to make a page more citable#

A few authoring patterns dramatically increase how often a page gets quoted:

  • Add an explicit tldr: frontmatter with a 1–2 sentence direct answer to the page's main question. Don't rely on auto-extraction if you can write something tighter.
  • Lead with a direct answer, then expand. AI models scan the first 200–300 characters most aggressively.
  • Use short, self-contained sentences with concrete numbers and dates — these are easier to pull out as a quote.
  • Set author: and authorUrl: in frontmatter when the page has subject-matter authority worth attributing.
  • Keep H2/H3 headings phrased as questions or imperatives ("How to configure webhooks", "What is a workspace?") — they match how users phrase queries.

How to enable#

  1. Open your workspace admin panel (FloatWidget) → SEO / GEO tab.
  2. Toggle GEO — Generative Engine Optimization on.
  3. The change applies to all pages in this workspace immediately on next render.

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