Airtable's sitemap lists 1,411 pages of databases built by its own users, more than its templates, articles and guides combined.
Each page lets a searcher start using the product in one click, a model for B2B software teams that we trace from 2012 to the AI era.
The timeline below shows the full story, and each chapter ends with a short list of lessons:
Where Airtable started: a spreadsheet-like database
Airtable lets teams build business apps on a database that looks like a spreadsheet. It started in 2012, founded by Howie Liu, Andrew Ofstad and Emmett Nicholas.
Liu has said they spent almost 2.5 years building the product, since a true relational database was "a one way door."
Liu recalled that people "would have to show the product and talk about a use case" to understand it, which later shaped the SEO strategy.
The public launch came in early 2015, and in June the team announced a $7.6 million Series A led by CRV. Early users had already found unusual uses:
- Teams used Airtable to preserve ancient languages and to track scientific equipment.
- Others managed construction projects, and one group planned a U.S. presidential campaign.
What to take from this:
- Write down the use cases your sales team uses to explain the product in a first call.
- Treat every use case that needs a demo as a page you could publish.
The Universe bet: letting users write the pages
On September 28, 2017, Airtable launched Airtable Universe, a public gallery where anyone could publish a base for others to copy. Hundreds of creators had shared work there by launch day.
Launch bases included Insomniac's staffing system and Singularity University's editorial calendar. Readers could "click, copy, and start running their own versions" of each one right away.
Universe now holds 1,411 pages in the sitemap, and users publish its bases while Airtable's team manages the official templates.
We opened 20 random Universe pages, with titles such as "Laundry Symbol Guide," and saw these patterns:
- Only 2 of the 20 titles included "template," the word every official template page targets.
- Four of the 20 pages were in French or Spanish, reaching searchers outside English.
- Most titles named a narrow hobby or job that no keyword tool would suggest.
Users build this long tail for free, while the official gallery targets the searches Airtable picks.
Lessons for your team:
- Let customers publish their best setups on public pages under their own name.
- Add a copy button to every shared setup so readers can try it in your product.
The Airtable SEO engine by the numbers
Airtable's robots.txt points to a single sitemap with 3,118 URLs, which we grouped by top folder:
Universe and the official templates make up 1,702 URLs, or 55% of the sitemap. Articles, guides, use cases and integrations add 475 pages that often link to templates.
The rest of the site serves buyers further along in their research:
- Most of the 204 landing pages sit under /lp/resources/ with webinars, ebooks and demos.
- The 207 marketplace pages list extensions built by outside developers.
- Nine comparison pages, such as one against Asana, target buyers weighing two tools.
Similarweb's public page puts airtable.com at 25.8 million visits over the three months to September 2026. Direct visits drove 75.79% of desktop traffic in the latest month.
Ideas for your own site:
- Count your own URLs by folder to see where your site really invests.
- Check how many of your pages let a reader do something in the product.
How Airtable SEO turns template pages into sign-ups
The template gallery holds 291 official template pages, grouped by use case, industry and feature.
Each page targets one "[use case] template" search, as the content calendar template shows. Its title tag reads "Free Content Calendar Template," and its H1 reads "Content calendar template."
We found these parts on that page, listed from the top down:
- A blue Use template button copies the base straight into your workspace.
- A live preview shows the calendar with sample content.
- Short sections answer "What is a content calendar template?" and list the base's contents.
- An "Other Marketing templates" row links to 13 related templates, from social media to email.
We then opened 40 random template pages and 20 random Universe pages, and the templates almost always followed the same recipe:
All 40 template pages carried the copy link, 39 titles included "template" and 37 included "Free," with the first product step near the top.
What to take from this:
- Build one page for each "[use case] template" search that your buyers make often.
- Make the main button open your product with that template already loaded.
- Show a live preview of the finished setup before sign-up.
- Link each template to related ones so readers can browse a category.
Our SaaS keyword research guide shows how to find the use case searches worth a page of their own.
Articles and guides around each template
Airtable also publishes 215 articles, and 54 of them cover AI or agents. Twelve slugs start with "best," such as best OKR tools.
The best project management software article reviews 25 tools for 2026 and explains how the team picked them. A "Summarize with" box offers one-click summaries in Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, Grok and Perplexity.
It also has FAQPage schema with six questions and a case for Airtable, a mix we want in strong bottom of funnel content.
The guides hub holds 84 how-to guides in eight groups, led by product operations with 26 guides.
Lessons for your content team:
- Write a "best tools" article for each category you compete in, and say how you picked.
- Group your how-to guides by the job a buyer is doing, such as product operations.
- Add FAQ schema and short answers so AI tools can quote your pages.
Pages for buyers close to a decision
Airtable has 27 integration pages for tools its buyers use, such as Salesforce, Slack, Snowflake, Jira and Claude.
The Jira integration page uses the title tag "Airtable + Jira Cloud Integration." Its headings cover how the sync works and which plans include it.
The 141 use case pages read like customer stories without names. The employee onboarding page follows one delivery company from problem to fix and has FAQ schema.
Many use case slugs pair a job with an industry, such as budget tracking for live sports, so one workflow ranks for many niche searches.
What to take from this:
- Build an integration page for each tool your buyers already pay for.
- Say which plan includes each integration, since buyers ask before they buy.
- Turn support tickets and sales calls into use case pages for each industry you serve.
Airtable in the AI era
By March 2021, Airtable had 250,000 organizations as customers and raised $270 million at a $5.77 billion valuation. In December it raised $735 million at an $11 billion pre-money valuation, and more than 80% of the Fortune 100 used it.
A year later, Liu moved the company's focus to large enterprises and cut 254 roles. Enterprise brought in most revenue, growing more than 100% a year with net dollar retention of 170%.
In September 2023, Liu wrote that the self-serve business continued to grow, "driven by inbound customer demand," with the company cash flow positive.
In July 2024, Cobuilder began turning a written idea into an app in seconds. In June 2025, Liu relaunched Airtable as an AI-native app platform with an agent called Omni, calling it "a refounding moment."
Templates kept their place, since every "Try it for free" button we checked now leads to Cobuilder. The gallery also has an "AI Powered" filter and a Claude prompt library template.
In August 2026, Bending Spoons agreed to buy Airtable at an enterprise value of $1.285 billion, and it completed the deal on September 4. Airtable now counts 500,000 companies, 50 million apps and agents and 10 million active users.
Lessons for your product team:
- Point your template pages at your newest product, such as an AI builder.
- Publish templates for new AI jobs, like a prompt library, as soon as buyers search for them.
What B2B SaaS can learn from Airtable's SEO
A company doesn't need 3,000 pages for this playbook, since ten template or use case pages can start trials with the work half done.
Here's the plan we would follow for a B2B company on a smaller budget:
- List the 20 jobs your customers most often set up in their first week.
- Check search demand for each job paired with words such as "template" or "tracker."
- Build a ready setup in your product for the ten jobs with the most demand.
- Publish one page per setup with a live preview and a button that copies it into a trial.
- Link each page to related templates, a how-to guide and an integration page.
- Invite customers to publish their own setups in a public community gallery.
- Track trials and paid accounts by template, then build more of what converts.
These pages also work in AI search because each one answers a clear question. Our B2B SaaS SEO guide covers the rest, from technical health to pillar pages.
FAQ
How does Airtable use templates for SEO?
Airtable publishes one page for each template, and each page targets a "[use case] template" search. In our sample of 40 pages, every page had a button that copies the base into the reader's workspace. Also, 39 of the 40 page titles included the exact word "template."
How many pages are in Airtable's sitemap?
Airtable's sitemap held 3,118 URLs when we counted it on November 3, 2026. Universe had 1,411 pages and the official templates had 291, so the two make up 55% of the sitemap.
What is the difference between Airtable templates and Airtable Universe?
Airtable's team builds and manages the official templates, while users publish the bases in Universe. Template pages target specific searches, and Universe pages carry the names their creators chose.
Can a small B2B SaaS company copy Airtable's SEO strategy?
Yes, a small team can start with ten template or use case pages for the jobs buyers search for most. Each page needs a preview and a button that opens a trial with the setup already loaded.
Who owns Airtable now?
Bending Spoons has owned Airtable since September 4, 2026, when it completed the acquisition. It agreed in August to buy the company at an enterprise value of $1.285 billion.
Start by listing the five setups your best customers build first and the searches behind each. To turn them into pages that start trials, book a free AI visibility audit with our team.
