VercatusThin pages
Google uses site-wide signals and classifiers alongside page-level ones. Its core-update guidance says to improve content first and treat deletion as a last resort, but where sections of a site were made for search engines rather than people, deleting that unhelpful content can help the site's good content perform better; John Mueller (2018) likewise said to improve or remove genuinely poor pages, not to prune on low traffic alone.
Sources
- 1
- 2Google · 2025Google Search's core updates (things to keep in mind when making changes)developers.google.com
- 3Google · 2026Spam policies: scaled content abuse, doorway abuse, thin affiliationdevelopers.google.com
- 4Search Engine Journal · 2018Google on Dealing with Low Traffic Pages (John Mueller)searchenginejournal.com
AGrade A: official documentation or a standard. A grade describes the provenance of the sources above; it is not a probability that a change will work. The effect basis says how the size of the effect is known: measured by a study, taken from an industry report, only documented without a size, or not quantified.
Put this evidence to work
Related entries
More in Content, or search the whole base.
All Content entries