Did pruning dead pages actually help a friend's site, or is that a myth?

Did pruning dead pages actually help a friend's site, or is that a myth?

Q: I keep hearing "delete your dead pages" but does it really move the needle?

A: Short answer: yes, when done surgically. Longer answer: a recipe site I helped audit had 412 published URLs. We found 168 of them had pulled under 5 clicks total in 12 months in Search Console. Instead of deleting blindly, we 301-redirected 140 to a stronger related post and let 28 go to 410 (gone). Over the next 90 days, the site's overall clicks rose 34 percent, and 9 of the surviving pages jumped from page 2 to page 1. The lesson isn't "delete" — it's consolidate crawl budget and link equity into pages that already half-work.

Anyone want me to go deeper on this? React 👍