"More indexed pages means more chances to rank."

"More indexed pages means more chances to rank."

No. Often the opposite.

Index bloat dilutes crawl attention and drags site-wide quality signals. Pruning is an on-page lever people forget. The checklist:

— Crawl the site and list every indexed URL. Tag-archives, filter combinations, internal search results, paginated tails, empty category pages — that's where the bloat hides.
— For each low-value type, decide: noindex, consolidate, or delete-and-301. Pick one per template, apply consistently.
— noindex, follow on utility pages keeps link equity flowing while pulling them from the index.
— Never noindex and disallow in robots.txt at once — blocked pages can't be crawled, so Google never sees the noindex and may keep them indexed forever.
— Recheck Search Console coverage after. The "Crawled, not indexed" bucket is Google telling you which pages it already judged thin.

Fewer, stronger pages outrank a swarm of weak ones. (The "more pages = more lottery tickets" model assumes each page is free. Each page costs crawl budget and averages down your site's quality. The tickets aren't free; they're taxed.)