Thin Content
Thin content is any page that adds little value for the reader, whether it is near-empty, auto-generated, scraped or built purely to hold a keyword. At scale it drags down how search engines assess the quality of your whole site.
Why it matters for your rankings
Thin content is judged by value delivered rather than word count. A 200-word page that answers a question completely is not thin. A 2,000-word page that circles the subject without answering anything is.
The site-wide effect is what makes it dangerous. Google assesses quality partly in aggregate, so a large volume of weak pages holds back the strong ones, which is why pruning frequently lifts rankings for content nobody edited. Automatically generated pages are now explicitly targeted by Google's scaled content abuse policy, which covers mass-produced AI content published without meaningful oversight. The test that matters is whether a page would be worth publishing if search engines did not exist.
How to check it on your site
Find pages with no engagement
Cross-reference Search Console clicks with Ahrefs links. Pages with neither over twelve months are candidates.
Check indexation rates
If Google indexes only a fraction of a template's pages, it is telling you they are not worth keeping.
Judge by intent satisfaction
Read a sample cold and ask whether the page fully answers the query it targets.
Consolidate rather than delete
Merging several thin pages into one substantive page keeps the value and removes the drag.