Collapsing 6 country pages into 1 language page: when fewer cells won

Collapsing 6 country pages into 1 language page: when fewer cells won

Hypothesis: maintaining six identical English country pages (en-us/gb/au/ca/ie/nz) was creating dilution and maintenance cost without ranking benefit, and a single en page would consolidate. Methodology: deliberately running against the usual 'more granularity' advice. One B2B SaaS where content was genuinely identical across all six and pricing was USD everywhere. We collapsed to one en page plus x-default. 12 weeks.

What the data suggests:
— Before, the six pages cannibalized each other: GSC showed 2–4 of them competing for the same query in 47% of tracked terms (classic same-language cannibalization).
— After consolidation to a single authoritative en page, that one page concentrated the signals: average position improved from 6.2 to 3.9 across the head set.
— Aggregate English clicks +18%, with the biggest gains in the smaller markets (NZ, IE) that had previously had weak standalone pages.

Caveats: this only worked because the content and pricing were truly identical. The moment you have regional pricing, shipping, or legal differences, consolidation destroys the localization you need. We'd consider this an anti-pattern for most retail. Also n=1.

Conclusion: granularity is a cost, not a virtue. If six pages say the same thing, six cells just cannibalize. The data suggests collapsing wins precisely when there's nothing to localize.