Add a thin-content quality gate
Noindex anything below the bar. Mass-publishing thin pages is how sites get demoted wholesale.
Step 5.2.6
Time: 8h
Done when
Quote the gate's rule: the minimum word count or unique-data field, and what happens to a page that fails. A number and an action. (Proof: the exact words.)
If this is a change to your product
- What must become true
- A generated page cannot be published or left indexable unless it passes a stated minimum: content beyond the template, a minimum of unique data points, and no near-duplicate of a sibling page.
- Where it usually lives
- The publish step of the generator or the CMS, plus the rule that sets each page’s robots tag and sitemap membership.
- The trap
- A gate tuned on word counts also noindexes pages that already earn clicks. Export the pages with clicks first and exempt them, as the next step says.