When a user submits a form on your website, it’s common to direct them to a “Thank You” or success page. These pages serve a variety of purposes—from confirming the action was successful to offering additional instructions or next steps. However, one critical but often overlooked SEO debate is whether these success pages should be indexed by search engines or set to noindex. The answer isn’t a one-size-fits-all. It depends heavily on the purpose of the page, your website’s goals, and overall SEO strategy.
What Is a Success Page?
A success page, often referred to as a “Thank You Page,” is the destination a user lands on after completing a form, such as signing up for a newsletter, submitting a contact request, or downloading gated content. It typically includes a confirmation message and may suggest follow-up actions, like:
- Downloading a file or accessing a resource
- Following social media accounts
- Signing up for more offers or webinars
- Navigating to relevant blog posts or service pages
Because these pages exist primarily to serve users who’ve completed a specific action, the question arises: do you want search engines crawling and indexing them?
The Case for Indexing Thank You Pages
There are some situations where allowing your thanks page to be indexed can actually benefit your SEO strategy. Here’s when that makes sense:
1. Valuable Content on the Page
If your success page contains unique, high-quality content—such as insights, downloadable resources, or even answers to commonly asked questions—then indexing it can help drive organic traffic. It acts as another entry point for users searching for those resources or information.
For example, a thank you page might contain:
- A mini guide on how to use your service
- Links to detailed tutorials or support content
- Video content or explanations relevant to the user’s intent
If crafted correctly, this page can rank in SERPs for long-tail and informational search queries.
Image not found in postmeta2. Marketing and Conversion Tracking
While not a direct SEO benefit, tracking indexed success pages can help identify when a lead is generated through organic traffic. If your thank you page has its own unique URL and is indexed, analytics platforms can attribute goals and conversions more precisely.
3. Building Topical Authority
If your website is targeting a tightly focused niche, allowing search engines to explore your success pages might help demonstrate topical relevance and completeness. This could potentially lift the overall authority of your site in specific subject areas.
The Case Against Indexing Thank You Pages
While indexing might offer some benefits, the arguments for using noindex on success pages are often more compelling—especially from a technical SEO standpoint.
1. Thin or Duplicate Content
Most thank you pages contain very little unique content. With lines like “Thank you for contacting us. We’ll be in touch soon“, the page adds little or no value from a search engine’s perspective. Indexing these pages could lead to Google’s algorithms classifying them as thin content, which may hurt your overall site quality score.
2. Crawl Budget and Index Waste
Crawl budget may not be a huge concern for smaller sites, but for larger websites with thousands of URLs, it’s critical. You don’t want Google wasting its crawl resources on low-priority pages when it should be focusing on your money pages.
3. Duplicate Conversion Entry Points
Let’s say a user Googles a format like “Thank you for subscribing” and lands directly on your thank you page. In this scenario, the user bypasses the form entirely, defeating the purpose of gating content or capturing a lead.
This is particularly important for gated content. If your success page includes a link to download an eBook or resource, and it’s indexed, then anyone can find and access that URL via a search engine—without providing their information.
4. Potential for Confusing Search Signals
Thank you pages often lack the inbound backlinks, engagement metrics, and time-on-page figures necessary to rank well. If indexed, these low-performing pages might dilute your site’s overall performance, or even worst, generate unwanted traffic from search engines that doesn’t convert.
Best Practices for SEO and Thank You Pages
Understanding how to handle your success pages in the SEO landscape comes down to deliberate implementation. Here’s how to make the right decision:
1. Use noindex by Default
Unless there’s a compelling reason otherwise, apply the noindex meta tag on success pages. This instructs search engines not to include them in their search results:
<meta name="robots" content="noindex, follow">
This way, bots can still follow links on the page to other parts of your website, supporting crawl depth, but the page itself won’t appear in SERPs.
2. Block in robots.txt Strategically
Some sites go a step further and disallow crawling of thank you pages in the robots.txt file. This can be done like so:
User-agent: *
Disallow: /thank-you/
However, note that disallowing in robots.txt doesn’t automatically prevent indexing—especially if the page has external links pointing to it. Meta tags are better for this purpose.
3. Create Custom, Value-Driven Success Pages (If You Choose to Index)
If you truly believe a thank you page should be indexed, enrich it with valuable, index-worthy content. Some ideas:
- Include summaries of related blog posts or whitepapers
- Add customer testimonials or short UGC videos
- Embed share options and social proof elements
- Use internal linking to guide users to pillar pages
Think about the user intent: what does someone need right after they’ve submitted a form? Serve that directly on the page.
How to Test and Monitor Thank You Page SEO
Once you’ve made a decision, whether to index or noindex, it’s important to monitor the outcomes. You can use tools like:
- Google Search Console: to see if thank you pages are being crawled or receiving impressions
- Google Analytics: to determine bounce rate and conversion flow from these pages
- Screaming Frog or Sitebulb: for auditing indexability settings across your site
Final Answer: Index or Noindex?
If you’re leaning toward a best-practice SEO approach, then the safe recommendation is:
Set your thank you pages to “noindex, follow.”
This keeps them functional for tracking purposes and SEO crawl flow, without cluttering search results with low-value content. However, if you’ve optimized your success pages with rich content, supplemental value, or conversion-oriented information, there’s a valid case for allowing indexing.
Conclusion
Ultimately, whether or not to index your form thank you pages should be a conscious decision—aligned with your SEO strategy, user experience goals, and marketing funnel objectives. In most cases, thank you pages are better kept out of the search index. But with inventive content and strategic thinking, they can become powerful post-conversion touchpoints that justify their place in SERPs.
Make sure to evaluate each case individually, test outcomes, and adjust your indexing strategy as your site evolves. The decision to index or not is more than technical—it’s a reflection of how you value each step in the user journey.
