Thin content describes pages that give visitors little or no added value. Google also uses the phrase as the name of a manual action, “Thin content with little or no added value”.
What counts as thin content?
Google’s manual action documentation lists three example groups. They are thin affiliate pages, content from other sources such as scraped content or low-quality guest blog posts, and doorway pages. What they share is the lack of substantial content of their own.
There is no minimum length. Google’s guidance on helpful content asks whether you are writing to a particular word count because you heard Google has a preferred one, and answers “No, we don’t.” Figures such as “under 300 words” are rules of thumb from SEO practice. A short page, for example a contact page or a clear definition, can serve its purpose.
Example (fictional)
A travel site generates one page for each of 2,000 towns with the same text and only the town name swapped. The pages barely differ and answer no question specific to a place.
How to fix it
Google’s documentation suggests auditing for duplicated or shallow pages and improving them so they provide significant value to users. In practice that means expanding a page, merging it with similar pages or removing it.
Sources
- Thin content with little or no added value – Search Console Helpsupport.google.com
- Creating helpful, reliable, people-first content – Google Search Centraldevelopers.google.com
- Spam policies for Google web search – Google Search Centraldevelopers.google.com
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