<b>WordPress tag pages = silent index bloat machine</b>

<b>WordPress tag pages = silent index bloat machine</b>

Client had 40 posts and 600 indexed URLs. The culprit: every tag, every author archive, every date archive spinning up a near-empty listing page.

The cleanup:
— Tag archives: noindex unless a tag has 10+ posts and real search intent
— Date and author archives: noindex across the board
— Kept category archives indexed because those map to real topics

Dropped 600 indexed URLs to about 70 that all earn their spot. Crawl budget stopped getting wasted on empty tag pages.

Most SEO plugins do this in two clicks. The trap is leaving the defaults on at launch.

Caveat: noindex but leave them <code>follow</code> so link flow through them survives. Don't nofollow your own archives.