Foundational pillar / check thin-content

Main content sufficiency

Flags pages that are empty, made mostly of the shared site template, or that never cover the topic their own heading promises. There is no word-count target, because Google has none.

By Shimon Carroll, Founder, SEO for AI Agents · Last updated

What this check measures

Three signals. First, the share of the page text that also appears on at least half of the other crawled pages (navigation, footers, template blurbs), measured with five-word shingles; the rest is the page's unique main content. Second, whether that unique content is nearly empty (fewer than 50 words, an emptiness detector rather than a length target). Third, whether the content terms in the page's H1 (or title) recur in its own body text.

Why it matters

Google asks whether a page fully answers what a visitor came for and states directly that it has no preferred word count. A short page that answers its question completely is fine; a long page that is mostly template text, or that never addresses its own heading, is not. Measuring evidence of insufficiency instead of length avoids the myth that more words rank better while still catching genuinely empty or off-topic pages.

How we score it

FAIL (medium) when the page has almost no unique main content. FAIL (low) when most of its text repeats across the site template, or when its body barely mentions what its heading promises. PASS otherwise. Duplicate pages are reported by the separate duplicate-content check and are not counted twice here.

Confidence-flag rules

MEDIUM when other pages were crawled, so the template share could be measured. LOW on a single-page audit, where the template share is unknown and the whole page text is treated as main content.

Common mistakes

  • Padding a page to reach a word count. Google has no preferred word count.
  • Location or service pages that differ only by a city name and share every other sentence.
  • Headings that promise a topic the page never discusses.
  • Template-heavy pages where navigation and footer text outweigh the content.

How to fix it

Read the page as a first-time visitor with the question its heading implies, and add what is missing to answer it: specifics, steps, prices, examples, and sources. If the page cannot stand on its own, merge it into a page that already covers the topic and redirect it. Do not add words for length.

Primary sources

Changelog

  • · Replaced the fixed 300-word threshold with evidence-based signals: near-empty unique content, boilerplate share across crawled pages, and coverage of the page topic. The old threshold contradicted Google guidance and our own master guide, and it told owners of complete short pages to pad them.
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