Regardless of how you feel about certain content on your website, Google and other search engines will reward or penalize you based on how all of your content performs. As SEO expert Marie Haynes put it, “Google doesn’t hate your blog. It just doesn’t see a reason to crawl it again.”
That’s why it’s essential to either continue optimizing underperforming content or remove it when necessary. Even though there’s no universal benchmark, your best insight comes from trending your own data over time.
What Is the Indexed Pages Traffic Ratio?
The Indexed Pages Traffic Ratio is your answer to the following questions you should be asking every month:
What percentage of my indexed pages are getting any traffic (visits or views)?
This is your Indexed Pages Traffic Ratio.
Google’s documentation on Crawl Budget and Indexing Best Practices emphasizes the importance of managing your website’s indexed content. Regularly auditing and optimizing your indexed pages ensures that search engines focus on your most valuable content, enhancing overall SEO performance.
Why Track Your Indexed Pages Traffic Ratio?
Tracking this metric helps you identify indexed content that may be:
- Invisible to users (poor navigation or linking)
- Underperforming (thin or outdated content)
- Unintentionally indexed (search results, tag archives, etc.)
By surfacing pages that get no traffic, you can fix what matters and prune what doesn’t.
How to Calculate Your Indexed Pages Traffic Ratio
- In Google Search Console, export all indexed pages.
- In Google Analytics (GA4), pull a list of all pages that had traffic during your time range.
- Exclude non-content pages (e.g., 404s, archives, internal searches).
- Remove any pages published after the date range you’re analyzing.
- Normalize URLs if pages were renamed or redirected.
- Divide the number of pages with traffic by total indexed pages.
Example: 64 / 126 = 51%
Here’s My Data for the Past Three Months
| Date | Total Indexed Pages | Indexed Pages with Traffic | Indexed Pages Traffic Ratio |
|---|---|---|---|
| March 2025 | 97 | 39 | 40% |
| April 2025 | 112 | 48 | 43% |
| May 2025 | 126 | 64 | 51% |
What’s Next?
While I don’t know how this compares to other websites, I do know it’s improving. I’ve been actively working on internal linking, navigation, and performance. I plan to continue monitoring to make sure more of my website is pulling its weight.
Tip: Set a monthly goal for your Indexed Pages Traffic Ratio and track your progress. It’s one of the clearest signs that your content is doing what it should – getting found and delivering value.