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Our site is relatively new, has very little link/domain authority, and currently has 11 pages indexed by Google.

It is a directory site. We have about 550,000 user profiles and about 60,000 directory search result pages. I've created pretty URLs (and sitemaps + sitemap index) for all of them, and would like to get these pages indexed in order to gain exposure in long-tail searches.

The pages:

  • are all legitimate and contain distinct information
  • aren't doorways, ads, 301 or 302 redirects, etc.
  • have a good ratio of unique content relative to each other (especially the search result pages)

If we were an established site with domain authority, I wouldn't even consider this a potential issue.

In this scenario, is it dangerous to get many URLs indexed?

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  • You are treading dangerous waters even if your site was high authority. Profile pages should not be indexed. Even directory sites are being pinged by Google these days as low quality. This is not a time for a site like this. 2015 has been a tough year with so many updates some specifically to take a very hard look at directory sites and others. 2016 is not going to be better. I would advise flying under the radar as much as possible until Google softens it's approach.
    – closetnoc
    Mar 22, 2016 at 22:53

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We have about 550,000 user profiles and about 60,000 directory search result pages. I've created pretty URLs (and sitemaps + sitemap index) for all of them, and would like to get these pages indexed in order to gain exposure in long-tail searches.

A typical search result page isn't really a quality page because it gives a list of results and in a matter of seconds, users will click on a result and leave the page. Google already generates search results pages for public areas of a website. So my suggestion here is to not try to index those 60,000 pages.

As for the 550,000 user profile pages, (as closetnoc says) take extreme caution. If its like a typical profile page consisting of just a person's name and maybe address and/or photo and maybe one sentence, then forget indexing those pages as well. Google will consider that "thin content".

If on the other hand you spent glorious amounts of time validating each of those 550,000 pages in great detail ensuring that there are several paragraphs to each profile that provides an in-depth biography about the person, then its well worth indexing because then people can become well educated from reading your posted profiles.

Put it this way. I suggest that for each page you want indexed, it must contain at the very bare minimum, 200 words. And a basic profile just wouldn't cut it.

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  • I don't think our content would be considered thin. The search results are listings of our service providers in a specific area, but all the complete profiles are included on the same page (using collapsible content), so they're very rich and unique. My main concern is some type of filter that automatically flags sites with a high number of indexed URLs but is low domain authority.
    – Nathan
    Mar 23, 2016 at 6:11
  • This is the best answer, and to your specific concern - no - there's no limit to the number of pages of content a site can have as a threshold for being flagged - but it would be a very large ask of a search engine to go to all the trouble to spider and index them if domain/pages are low authority.
    – Mike Hudson
    Mar 24, 2016 at 4:53
  • OP: The thing that should be of concern is the actual content of the profiles themselves as well as the amount of it. Low quality content is what will be filtered. You might want to review the google's webmaster guidelines.
    – Mike -- No longer here
    Mar 25, 2016 at 16:44

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