Helpful content update + automated content

[londrum]

So I've done a bit of digging into my stats and i think i got hit by the helpful content updates in August 2022 and December-January 2023 (I know I'm late to the party, but I never look at my stats!)

I've got 45,000 automated pages on my site that provide routing information between two locations. I think the information is helpful, but it's obviously created from a database with lots of repetition in wording and I'm guessing that's the problem.

So I'm wondering... has anyone else dumped all of their automated content after the helpful content update?
Did you noindex it all, or go for a full delete?

If I dump the whole lot my page count will drop from about 50,000 to 5,000, which is a big huge change to make.

[aristotle]

So your theory is that these automated content pages are dragging down the whole site?

That seems plausible to me.

But I don't know if noindexing these pages would help, since they would still be part of the site's content that visitors can view.

Does google currently include these pages in its search index? If not, google has effectively already de-indexed them.

Would deleting these pages require big changes in the internal linking?

[londrum]

more than half of them are indexed. i think the others never get in because you reach them via a form, so they don't have more than one internal link.
most of them probably never get any traffic.

[not2easy]

If you reach them via a form, I would think you do not need them indexed. If without using the form it would be just anonymous data or data without context it would seem to be less helpful. I'm taking my view from the information you've shared here. You would know better than anyone whether the content can/should stand alone. If indexed they might be a visitor's first landing page. I would decide based on user experience.

[londrum]

Its a journey from A to B. They put in their start and end point and it brings up the routing info.
I think I'm going to noindex them and see how it goes