“Delete everything older than this date” is a wonderfully simple rule. It is also a fairly poor substitute for finding out what those pages still do.
In September 2026 I built a retention report around evidence for individual URLs. The question was whether to keep, update, combine or retire a piece of content. Its age was a reason to review it, not the answer.
Start with the job the page still does
I look at search activity, visits where available, useful links and the content itself. An old explanation may still answer a recurring question. A time-sensitive announcement may now need an archive notice. Several near-duplicates may be better served by one carefully maintained page.
A quiet reporting window does not prove that an article has no value. Seasonal demand, missing analytics and incomplete backlink information all affect the evidence. “No useful data yet” is a more honest label than “worthless”.
Make the choices easy to understand
- Keep
- The page still serves a useful purpose. Keep its facts and links under review.
- Needs an update
- There is a reason to revisit the content, its presentation or its promise in search.
- Consider combining
- Read the overlap, choose a proper replacement if one exists and plan any redirect.
- Keep out of search
- The page may remain useful to visitors without being intended as a search landing page.
- Retire
- If the content has gone, use an appropriate response and explain the decision.
Those are editorial decisions. A report can suggest a review group; it cannot know that an unrelated destination is a suitable replacement just because it has more traffic.
Separate the recommendation from the action
The first report changed nothing about a page. Later work added explicit, logged actions: indexing instructions, redirects, dated-content notices and a gone response. The stored content remained available to restore. I wanted a person to be able to see what had been applied and undo it.
A notice is not the same as a search instruction. A redirect is not the same as deleting a database record. Clear labels matter because otherwise someone can approve a small-sounding change without understanding what a visitor will receive.
Review a small batch first
I start with representative examples, check their actual public responses and confirm that internal links and sitemaps still make sense. Then I review the data over an appropriate period. For pages being kept out of search, I also check that crawl rules allow the indexing instruction to be seen.
For a longer-term policy, I agree which content expires and which needs periodic care. That is much more useful than returning every few years with a bigger deletion list.
The aim is a smaller maintenance burden and a clearer experience for readers. Keeping useful work is part of that job.