---
title: Removing thousands of URLs is an experiment, not a fix
description: Cutting thin URL combinations sounds like an obvious win. I check three things, in a fixed order, before calling it one.
url: https://tanujsharma.xyz/notes/removing-urls-is-an-experiment
author: Tanuj Sharma
published: 2026-10-15
---

# Removing thousands of URLs is an experiment, not a fix

Deleting thousands of thin URL combinations sounds like an obvious win. It might not be, so I treat it as a test and check three things, in this order:

1. Does Googlebot stop requesting the URL patterns I removed?
2. Does more of Google’s crawling go to the pages I actually want indexed?
3. Only then: do the remaining pages get found faster, indexed more often, or show up more in search?

If the first two happen and the third doesn’t, the cleanup still worked. It made the site easier to crawl. It just didn’t move rankings, and that is worth knowing too.

Source: [Google Search Central, Crawl budget management for large sites](https://developers.google.com/crawling/docs/crawl-budget)

## Related

- Research: [What 400K+ crawled-but-not-indexed URLs can teach us about large-scale SEO.](https://tanujsharma.xyz/research/crawled-not-indexed-large-scale-seo)
- Research: [What happens when you remove thousands of low-value URL combinations?](https://tanujsharma.xyz/research/removing-low-value-url-combinations)
- Note: [Requesting indexing again won’t fix “Crawled – currently not indexed”](https://tanujsharma.xyz/notes/request-indexing-wont-fix-crawled-not-indexed)
- Essay: [SEO Is Not Dead. Search Has Become Bigger Than Google.](https://tanujsharma.xyz/writing/seo-is-not-dead)