Anything past click-depth 4 falls off a crawl cliff

Anything past click-depth 4 falls off a crawl cliff

In 209 domains, indexation rate dropped sharply beyond depth 4: depth 0–3 indexed at 91%, depth 5+ at 34%.

— Depth 0–3 indexed: 91.0% ▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓░
— Depth 5+ indexed: 34.0% ▓▓▓░░░░░░░
— Median deepest revenue page: depth 6
— Crawl frequency depth 5+ vs depth 2: ↓ 7x

The mistake: flat-architecture assumptions while deep facets and archives push key pages to depth 6–9. Crawl frequency and indexation decay with every click from home.

Fix: flatten with hub pages, contextual internal links, and HTML sitemaps so no money page sits past depth 3. Cohort that re-linked depth-6 pages up to depth 3 saw their indexation jump from 34% to 79% (↑ 45 pts).

So what: distance from the homepage is a tax on indexation.