What is Index Bloat?
Index bloat refers to the situation wherein a search engine indexes many low-quality or irrelevant pages on a site. Typically, search engines only want to include helpful pages in their index. However, unhelpful pages sometimes slip through, causing index bloat.
The following types of pages can cause index bloat:
- Duplicate pages
- Thin and low-quality pages
- Category and tag archive pages
- Website search result pages
- Paginated pages
Index bloat negatively impacts a site’s SEO performance and increases the time search engines spend processing data from the site. It could also cause search engines to improperly index and display pages from the site.
To address index bloat, it is essential to regularly review and optimize the website’s content, ensuring that only high-quality and relevant pages are indexed by search engines.