Large-scale platform · Technical SEO
Designing search systems for a directory with millions of pages
Template-level search strategy for a national directory where a small implementation decision could affect an enormous population of pages.
At directory scale, every local fix is really a product decision
As SEO Lead for one of the UK’s largest online directories, I worked across more than 20 million pages. A canonical rule, internal-link module or template change could improve an entire section or create millions of weak URLs.
The job was therefore to identify patterns, understand how crawlers moved through the platform and decide which changes belonged in the underlying system.
I treated crawlability and discovery as an information architecture problem
The work covered crawl-budget management, directory and location structures, internal linking, redirects, structured data and Core Web Vitals. Analysis was segmented by page and template type so aggregate numbers did not hide the real behaviour.
Content workflows were designed around reusable rules and meaningful local information rather than attempting to optimise pages manually. That connected search performance with a more useful directory experience.
Scale changed how evidence had to be communicated
Recommendations needed to explain the size of the affected population, the likely upside or risk, and the implementation point where a team could intervene. That made prioritisation possible for product and engineering teams managing a very large estate.
The experience still shapes how I investigate complex sites
It taught me to distinguish a broken page from a broken rule. That perspective now informs my work with marketplaces, publishers, international estates and any organisation where the right template-level decision matters more than a long list of individual fixes.
