Indexable pages with very little main content

Why it matters

A page with almost no content of its own is unlikely to give a visitor what they came for. Finding such pages early lets you decide which ones to improve, combine with another page or keep out of search.

What to do

1. Read the excerpt in the finding: up to 500 characters from the start of the counted main-region text, with the exact word count.
2. If the page should answer a visitor's question, add what they need, such as details, steps, prices or answers to common questions.
3. If the page repeats another one, merge the two and send the old address to the stronger page.
4. If the page has a utility role and is not meant to be found in search, mark it noindex on purpose.

When to leave it as it is: if the page is short by design and does its job, such as a contact page, a short notice or a confirmation step, leave it as it is. The finding asks you to review the page; it does not claim the page is too short for its purpose.

What we read

We read the complete HTML of each page as the server returned it with status 200 and type text/html, without running JavaScript, and only for pages that are indexable: no noindex in the head or the X-Robots-Tag header, and no canonical that points to another address.

We choose a region kind in order: main if any are present, otherwise role="main", otherwise article. There must be exactly one element of the chosen kind. We count the extracted HTML words inside it, including a menu or sidebar placed there; a missing or ambiguous region is not checked.

The page is reported when that count is below the recorded minimum for this check, 200 words by default.

Example & evidence

Illustrative example — one page, not a live audit.

Address: https://garden.example/services/hedge-trimming/

The main region we read:

<main>
  <h1>Hedge trimming</h1>
  <p>Call us for a quote.</p>
</main>

That is 7 words inside the main region, under the default minimum of 200, so the page is listed for review. The menu and footer outside the region are not counted.

If the page should bring visitors on its own, describe the service: what it includes, the area you cover, typical prices and how to book. Once a later complete audit counts at least the recorded minimum inside the main region, the page no longer meets the condition.

Confirm & check again

Check for yourself: open the page and find its main region, usually the main element. Ask whether the text there gives a visitor what the page promises; pasting it into any word counter gives a rough figure to compare with the minimum.

Check again: Full audit — run a new complete audit of the site. The finding closes for the same address only when the page is read again as complete HTML with one explicit main region whose word count reaches the recorded minimum. A page that could not be read in full, needs scripts to supply the measured content, has an unclear main region, or has become noindex or canonicalised elsewhere cannot show that; leaving the check's scope is not recorded as a fix.

Limits & sources

A word count measures length, not content quality, and is no ranking guarantee. A short page can be exactly right for its purpose.

Only the one explicit main region is counted; we do not guess where the main content is on pages without one. Text in Chinese, Japanese or Thai, written without spaces between words, cannot be counted reliably, so such a page is left unknown; Korean and other space-separated text use the same word count as English.

Pages whose capture, head, response headers or canonical cannot be confirmed are left unknown rather than reported or passed.

This is a structural check of server HTML, not browser visibility. We omit script, style, noscript, template, svg and comments, but do not evaluate CSS or the hidden attribute. Hidden text and headings may count. A later audit confirms only that this structural condition ended, not that visible content improved.

Confidence: Medium because the count is an exact measurement of the region's text; what stays uncertain is whether a short page is a problem, which only you can judge.

Sources

• Screaming Frog, Content: Low Content Pages — background: another crawler uses a default 200-word threshold as a rough guide rather than a true minimum; our check counts only the explicit main region. Checked 6 October 2026.

Editorial review: 2 November 2026