An electrician in Bristol pays for twenty location pages, one per town within an hour's drive. Each is the same four paragraphs with the town name changed. Months later none of them rank, and Search Console lists most as "Crawled, currently not indexed".
Nothing broke there. The pages simply had no reason to exist, and Google noticed.
Why swapped-name pages get filtered
Two things work against templated pages, and neither is a penalty.
The first is indexing. Before ranking anything, Google decides whether a page is distinct enough to keep. It treats near-identical pages as versions of one page and keeps one of them, or none (How Google ranks a page explains the process). Twenty pages that differ by one word look like a single page with twenty URLs, and "Crawled, currently not indexed" is Google telling you so.
The second is policy. Google's spam policies list doorway abuse, giving "multiple domain names or pages targeted at specific regions or cities that funnel users to one page" as an example. The same document defines scaled content abuse as producing many pages to manipulate rankings rather than to help users, and its first example is "using generative AI tools or other similar tools to generate many pages without adding value for users". The electrician's twenty pages fit both definitions. Google says there's no duplicate content penalty as such, so the usual outcome is that the pages never rank, although the policies page does say violating sites may rank lower or not appear at all.
Google draws its line at value rather than method. A page written from a template, by a person or by an AI tool is fine when it gives a reader in that town something they couldn't get from your homepage. When it doesn't, it's doorway content.
What can only be true of this place
Take any sentence on the page and change the town name. If the sentence stays true, it doesn't belong. Build the page from the ones that turn false.
Jobs you've done there. A rewire on a Victorian terrace off the high street, or a consumer unit in a new-build on the edge of town, each with a photo and a date.
The housing and the buildings. A town of interwar semis has different wiring from a town of barn conversions, and the lofts and common faults differ with it. Nobody can write this without having been there, and a local reader can tell.
Practical detail. How long you take to arrive, which days you're usually in the area, where you park, and anything the council or water company does differently. These are small things, but they're true and nobody can template them.
Reviews from customers in that town. Quote them, name the area they mention and link to the full review. If you have none yet, ask your next customer there; getting reviews consistently gives you a routine for it.
The services you do there, and the ones you don't. If you handle emergencies in the city but only planned work further out, say so. Link each named service to its service page instead of rewriting it.
After that come the ordinary on-page elements. Use a title such as "Electrician in Bath | Brook Electrical" with a matching heading, and open with a paragraph saying what you do in this town. Add your phone number and the same business details as your profile. Make one page per town covering the services you offer there, never one page per service per town.
Three checks before you publish
- The swap test. Change the town name throughout. If the page is still true, it's your homepage under a different heading rather than a location page.
- The local-reader test. Ask whether someone who lives there would learn anything about you that they can't find elsewhere on your site. If they wouldn't, Google has no reason to keep the page either.
- The inventory test. Count the towns you can write this page for honestly, with real jobs, photos and reviews. That number is how many location pages you should have. Smaller places that don't pass get grouped into one honest page, as the keyword mapping lesson described.
Link them, feed them, and retire them
A location page nobody links to gets crawled rarely. Put an "Areas we cover" section on your homepage that links to every location page by town name, and link from each service page to the towns where you offer it.
These pages age well only if you keep adding to them. Every job in that town is a sentence and possibly a photo, and every review naming the area is a quote, so the page gets more specific each month if you add them as they happen.
When you stop serving a place, take the page down or redirect it to the nearest page you still serve. A page for a town you no longer visit is simply false, and the customer who calls because of it becomes the review you didn't want.
Frequently asked questions
How much should I pay for a landing page?
For a local landing page, the cost that matters is the time you spend gathering true material about the place, such as jobs, photos and reviews. A cheap or free page built from a template still gets filtered if it says nothing specific. Pay for help with layout if you like, but don't pay for volume: the inventory test tells you how many pages you can honestly fill.
What is the best free landing page?
The free Location page generator gives you a usable skeleton, with structure, headings and a meta title and description. It can't supply the local detail, so you replace every paragraph that survives the swap test with something from your own records. The best free page is one you've done that to.
Can ChatGPT build a landing page?
It can draft one, and Google's spam policies don't object to the tool. They object to producing many pages without adding value for users. If an AI draft gives a reader in that town something your homepage doesn't, it's fine. If you generate twenty pages with the town swapped, it's the pattern Google filters.
Does Google have a free landing page?
Your Google Business Profile is free and carries your business details, but it isn't a page on your own site and doesn't replace a location page. A page on your site can hold the jobs, photos and reviews that make a town distinct. Keep its business details identical to your profile.
What to take away
- Google filters swapped-name location pages at indexing, and its spam policies name the pattern as doorway abuse and scaled content abuse.
- The line is value, not method: a location page is fine when it gives a reader in that town something they couldn't get from your homepage.
- Build each page from what is only true of that place, namely your jobs there, the local housing, practical detail, reviews from that town and the services you really offer.
- Run the swap test, the local-reader test and the inventory test before publishing, then add new jobs and reviews as they happen.
Next
If you travel to customers rather than serving them at an address, the setup changes. Service-area businesses covers the rules Google sets and how to rank across the whole area.