Thin content

Thin content is not primarily about word count. A short page can be perfectly adequate if it fully answers the visitor's question. The problem arises when a page exists but doesn't actually add anything: no original information, no answer, no reason to stay. Google describes this kind of page as content with little or no added value.

Such pages are rarely created on purpose. They creep into a website through automatically generated tag and archive pages, product pages with only a photo and a price, or series of almost identical pages for each town. The problem often grows unnoticed along with the site: every new blog tag or empty filter combination in an online shop adds another page, until a large part of the site consists of URLs that say very little.

Recognisable forms of thin content

• Pages for each city or town where only the place name differs.
• Product pages with a description copied from the manufacturer, which also leads to duplicate content.
• Blog posts of a few sentences that only touch on the topic.
• Automatically generated text that hasn't been checked or expanded.
• Empty category pages or pages with nothing but a contact form.

Why it can harm your visibility

A search engine has to make choices about which pages it crawls, indexes and shows. Lots of pages without added value can mean your strong pages get less attention. Google says its systems look at the quality of a site as a whole, so a large share of weak pages can probably affect the rest of your site too. On top of that, visitors who can't find an answer bounce away, which is rarely good for your conversion.

An example: the roofer in Yorkshire

A roofer from Leeds has thirty pages created, one for each town in the region, each with the same text and a different place name. On paper that looks clever for local SEO, but in practice it is thirty variations of nothing. A better approach is a handful of pages with genuinely local content: projects in that area, photos of completed work, specific questions about building regulations in that town. Pages without a story can be merged or kept out of the index with noindex.

Thin content and AI answers

AI search engines such as Perplexity, ChatGPT Search and Google AI Overviews build their answers from sources that contain concrete, useful information. A page that only repeats general statements offers little to cite. Content with first-hand experience, clear facts, price indications or steps has a better chance of being chosen as a source. Here too, more AI-generated text is not automatically better: without your own input, you simply add more thin pages.

How to clean up

1. Make a list of pages with few visitors and little content.
2. Decide for each page: enrich, merge or remove.
3. Redirect removed pages that still have value to a relevant page.
4. Build out strong pages around a clear topic, so your topical authority grows.

Looking for help enriching weak pages? With AI-assisted content creation with human review, you turn thin pages into content that genuinely answers questions.