.d53b12e5.png&w=3840&q=75 "Trivas.ai")
by Trivas.aiWe're pulling the plug on a standalone glossary page: /resources/data-dictionary/aov. This post is the internal record of why, and where the content lives once the page comes down. Short version: a single-formula definition page never had a path to ranking on its own, and leaving it live is actively dragging down the rest of the data dictionary.
The numbers don't leave much room for debate. Over the last three months, /resources/data-dictionary/aov pulled under 10 impressions and exactly zero clicks. Not low performance. No performance.
A page like this doesn't just sit there neutral, either. Google crawls it, finds almost no unique content, and files that signal away for the whole /resources/data-dictionary/ section. Topical authority gets evaluated at the section level now, not page by page in isolation. So a scatter of near-empty metric definitions under one folder doesn't read as "comprehensive glossary." It reads as thin content, repeated across a dozen URLs.
That's the real cost here. It's not that this one page is wasting crawl budget. It's that it's one of several pulling down the credibility of the entire dictionary.
AOV is total revenue divided by number of orders. That's it. There's no second layer to unpack, no edge cases worth a full page, no reason for someone to need 600 words when the formula takes one sentence.
Search behavior backs this up. Anyone typing "what is AOV" gets answered by a featured snippet or a broader ecommerce metrics roundup before they ever scroll to a dedicated definition page. There's no ranking opportunity left over for a bare glossary entry. We built the page expecting it to catch long-tail definitional traffic. It didn't, because that traffic gets intercepted upstream.
Compare that to the pages in our resources section that actually pull impressions. Those live inside broader guides, calculators, or comparison pieces that solve an actual task. A calculator earns a bookmark. A formula on its own earns nothing.
The plan is to fold the AOV definition, the formula, and a short benchmark note directly into the data dictionary index page, as one entry among several metrics instead of its own URL.
If the index gets too crowded as we migrate other thin metric pages into it, the fallback is a broader piece under guides and reports covering core ecommerce KPIs, where AOV sits next to CAC and LTV with actual context around how they interact. That's a page with the topical mass to compete for "ecommerce metrics" type queries. A lone glossary entry never was.
Either way, the rule is simple: pick whichever destination already has, or will have, enough depth to rank. Don't create another thin page just to relocate the problem.
Not much, honestly. We're keeping the formula and a one-paragraph plain-language definition. That's the entire useful payload from the original /resources/data-dictionary/aov page.
One addition during the merge: a short note on reading AOV alongside order volume and repeat purchase rate. AOV by itself is a misleading headline number. A brand can goose it by cutting discounts and losing volume, and the dashboard still looks like a win. That context didn't exist on the original page and it should have.
Everything else goes. The generic intro filler, the "why AOV matters" paragraph that said nothing specific, the restated definition in slightly different words halfway down. None of it added anything a reader couldn't get from the formula and one clear sentence.
Once the merged content is live on the target page, we set a 301 from /resources/data-dictionary/aov to wherever that ends up, the index or the guide.
Before that goes live, someone needs to audit the sitemap and any internal navigation or related-articles modules for lingering links to the old URL. Those need to point at the new location directly, not rely on the redirect to paper over it.
After the redirect ships, submit it in Search Console and watch for crawl errors over the following few weeks. If the index page genuinely can't absorb the content cleanly, the fallback isn't to leave the old page sitting there unindexed by neglect. Noindex it outright. A dead page quietly rotting is worse than one that's clearly marked as retired.
Pulling this page should reduce the number of near-zero-value URLs Google has to crawl and judge under /resources/data-dictionary/. Fewer thin pages, cleaner section-level signal. That's the bet.
This isn't a one-off fix for AOV. It's the template. Other single-metric dictionary pages are almost certainly sitting on the same flat performance, and they need the same treatment: consolidate, preserve the formula and definition, redirect, move on. Fixing AOV alone and leaving the rest standing defeats the purpose.
Going forward, we're adding a quarterly check of every /resources/data-dictionary child page against impression and click thresholds. Catch the next batch before they pile up, instead of doing this audit reactively a year from now.
If you're building out dashboards and want metrics like AOV shown in context instead of as isolated numbers, that's actually the whole premise behind our BI reporting product. And if you want more of this kind of practical, no-fluff breakdown on ecommerce metrics, our blog is a reasonable place to keep an eye on.
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