The debate over Domesday Book stems largely from two major figures of 19th Century Medieval Studies, F.W. Maitland and  V.H. Galbraith, and revolves, at least in part, around the relationship between Domesday Book and a satellite document known as the Inquisitio Comitatus Cantabrigiensis, a record of land holdings in the county of Cambridge that actually goes jnto far more detail than the eventual Domesday Book. The ICC is different from Domesday in one crucial detail: it is organised geographically rather than feudally. While Domesday is broken down into shire circuits, each specific book is organised primarily by fief (although that term itself is not used), e.g. the lands held by each tenant-in-chief. To that end, settlemets can be listed multiple times. The village of Wilksworth, on the edge of the royal vil at Wimborne Minster, for example, appears twice within Folio 18 of the Dorset Domesday Book, as one of its ploughlands (supporting 2 villager households, 2 smallholders and 2 slaves) was the property of a monk named Doda, and its other ploughland (supporting two smallholders and 2 slaves) was held by an Ælrun, presumably a Freeman of some kind. In contrast, the Inquisitio Comitatus Cantabrigiensis is organised primarily by Hundred, and then by tything or vil, with tenants-in-chief or tenants listed underneath each settlement.

Maitland, and subsequently J.H. Round (and more recently David Roffe) have argued that the ICC illustrates that all the preliminary surveys for Domesday Book were likely so-organised, and depict an attempt on the part of William's government to thoroughly catalogue and categorise land tenure and value across England with a view to thoroughly reforming geld revenue, which had diminished significantly from the figures purportedly collected during the reign of Cnut. Indeed, Maitland wrote:

One great purpose seems to mould both its form and its substance; it is a geld book. ... All the lands, all the land-holders of England may be brought before us, but we are told only of such facts, such rights, such legal relationships as bear on the actual or potential payment of geld. ... Our record is no register of title, it is no feodary, it is no custumal, it is no rent roll; it is a tax book; a geld book.

The challenge to Maitland and Round came from V.H. Galbraith, who argued that the conversion from geographical to feudal records by the Domesday scribes would have required considerable effort, and that other satellite texts such as the Liber Exoniensis are already in a 'feudal' format. From this, he argued that, while the format of Domesday Book lent itself readily to calculating feudal incomes, it was however essentially irrelevant as a fiscal document for tax purposes.

The current consensus holds that thosw two views are not necessarily entirely incompatible. H.B. Clarke's work on Yorkshire satellite texts showed that scribes there prepared conversion tables to readily cross-reference feudal and geographical holdings, while Sally Harvey suggests that Domesday Book represents a shifting of fiscal focus onto feudal income rather than the Geld as a result of changing land tenure practices since the Conquest of 1066. J. Holt and J.A. Green in particular illustrate that Domesday Book was primarily used as reference works for reeves - royal officers - to help inform them in dealings with local landholders, in particular assessing revenues due to the crown.