Scaled Content Abuse

Scaled content abuse is Google's name for making many pages that exist mainly to catch search queries. The pages have little of their own to offer the person reading them.

What the policy is aimed at

The target is intent plus value. Pages produced in bulk, whose main purpose is to catch queries rather than help a reader, are what the policy names.

Google is explicit that the method does not decide it. Human writing, automated writing, or a mix of both are all treated the same way.

What gets judged is the page in front of the reader. Does it add something a person could use?

If the honest answer is no, the page is filler no matter who typed it. That is an uncomfortable standard, and it is also the only one that survives a policy update.

Volume is not the violation

Large sites are normal. Retailers, directories and publishers all run thousands of pages without a problem, because each page carries real information.

The trouble starts when the pages are the same underneath. Fifty service-area pages with one city swapped are one page pretending to be fifty.

That pattern also has an older name in Google Search Essentials: doorway pages, built to funnel people from many queries into the same place.

So the useful question is never how many. It is whether page fifty is genuinely useful to somebody.

The policy is also not aimed at any one industry, which surprises people who assume it was written for local service sites. It applies wherever pages are made faster than anyone can make them worth reading.

A test you can run by hand

Open two of your own pages side by side and work through this short list.

How Microsite Generator handles this

The platform runs that test for you, and it runs it before anything publishes. The platform's page generator refuses pages that are a template with the town swapped, and edits that make pages too alike are refused too.

Pages written from your own answers pass, because they are individually built rather than filled in from a list.

Page counts are also capped by plan — up to 25, 50 or 100 pages per site. That keeps a site the size of the business behind it, not the size of a keyword list.

Updated September 2026

Frequently asked questions

Is automated writing against Google's rules?

No. Google judges the page, not the method. Automated pages with little value are the problem, not automation itself.

How many pages is too many?

There is no number. A thousand useful pages are fine and ten near-identical ones are not.

What is a doorway page?

A page made to catch a search query and pass the reader along somewhere else, usually one of many near-copies.

How do I fix pages I already published?

Merge the near-duplicates into one stronger page, add facts only your business can supply, and remove pages that serve no reader.

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