: SEO for new directory site: Could indexing 600k pages trigger spam flags? Our site is relatively new, has very little link/domain authority, and currently has 11 pages indexed by Google. It is

@LarsenBagley505

We have about 550,000 user profiles and about 60,000 directory search result pages. I've created pretty URLs (and sitemaps + sitemap index) for all of them, and would like to get these pages indexed in order to gain exposure in long-tail searches.


A typical search result page isn't really a quality page because it gives a list of results and in a matter of seconds, users will click on a result and leave the page. Google already generates search results pages for public areas of a website. So my suggestion here is to not try to index those 60,000 pages.

As for the 550,000 user profile pages, (as closetnoc says) take extreme caution. If its like a typical profile page consisting of just a person's name and maybe address and/or photo and maybe one sentence, then forget indexing those pages as well. Google will consider that "thin content".

If on the other hand you spent glorious amounts of time validating each of those 550,000 pages in great detail ensuring that there are several paragraphs to each profile that provides an in-depth biography about the person, then its well worth indexing because then people can become well educated from reading your posted profiles.

Put it this way. I suggest that for each page you want indexed, it must contain at the very bare minimum, 200 words. And a basic profile just wouldn't cut it.

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