What the scaled content policy forbids and what is fine

What the policy says in plain words

Google's spam policies list scaled content abuse as a violation. The test is the reason the pages exist. If they exist mainly to catch searches, and give a visitor little, the policy may apply.

Google's spam policies say generating many pages mainly to manipulate rankings is scaled content abuse however the pages are produced. Using AI is not banned in itself, but it can violate the policy when the pages add no value.

Read the source yourself in the documentation on Google Search Essentials. It is short, and the wording is clearer than most summaries of it.

Patterns that fit the description

These are the shapes that usually get flagged. In each one the page count is high and the value per page is low. Read the list as symptoms, not as a rulebook.

None of these depends on a tool. Each can be done by hand, and each can be avoided with software. Judge the page in front of you, not the way it was produced.

• Hundreds of pages that swap a town or service name into the same text.
• Articles rewritten from other sites with no new information.
• Pages stitched together from search results or feeds with nothing added.
• Pages made only to catch a search, with no answer worth reading.
• Pages produced faster than anyone could check them for accuracy.

What is perfectly fine

A site can have many pages. A business with several services and several areas legitimately needs many. The question is whether each page tells a visitor something the others do not.

A page about a service in one town is fine when it says real things about that service there. Software can help write it. What matters is whether a person would be glad to land on it.

Using automated tools is not the offense. Publishing without checking, and publishing pages with nothing to say, is.

How to test your own pages

Take two pages and remove the place and service names from both. If what is left reads the same, the pages are one page. Visitors and search engines can see it too.

Then ask what a reader learns from each page that they would not learn from the other. If you cannot name something, merge them or add the missing detail.

Our page on thin content covers the matching test for a single page, and doorway pages covers the related pattern of pages built as entrances.

How a careful builder avoids the trap

Website Builder Studio checks every page before it 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.

A page that fails a must-pass check does not go live, and the assistant says why. That is the swapped-town template this policy describes.

The check does not replace your judgment. You still know whether a page says something true about your business.

If you already have pages like this

Do not delete everything at once. List the pages, and group the near-copies. Keep the ones with real substance and improve them with local detail, photos and answers only you can give.

Merge the weakest into stronger pages and redirect the old addresses, so nothing breaks. Our guide to location pages shows what a good one contains.

This page explains a policy and is not legal advice. Reading the policy source is the best way to see where your own site stands.

Why bulk is tempting and why it backfires

Bulk is tempting because pages feel like progress. A hundred new addresses look like work done. But search engines and customers judge each page on what it says, so a hundred weak pages are a hundred weak answers.

The cost shows up later. Weak pages dilute a site, make the strong ones harder to find, and can draw a policy action that affects the whole site. It is cheaper to write fewer pages well, and the reader is better served.