Refresh, merge or retire? A decision sheet for older guides

An older guide with little traffic is not automatically a deletion candidate. It might support a narrow but useful task, attract a few valuable referrals, or explain something another page relies on.

For a worked example, I would review a guide against five questions: is the information correct, is the task still relevant, does another page answer it better, can the current page be improved, and what would happen to existing links if it disappeared?

The decision sheet would record the proposed action and its reason. “No traffic” is an observation; “merge into a better answer” is a decision that needs a destination.

Which evidence would you want before retiring a page?

I would look beyond a short reporting window. A seasonal guide can look unused during its quiet months, and a measurement change can make the comparison misleading.

Add publication date, last meaningful update, seasonal relevance and measurement limitations to the sheet. That does not require keeping every page; it makes the decision easier to defend later.

I would check whether low traffic reflects a discovery or indexing problem before treating it as a content verdict. A useful guide buried several levels down may need better links rather than a rewrite.

If the proposal is a merge, compare both pages' purposes. Redirecting to a loosely related page can leave readers without the answer they expected.

I would split the sheet into diagnosis and action. That prevents “low traffic” from becoming the action by default.

For every merge, the editor should identify the material being retained, the destination section, and the links needing updates. For a retirement without a replacement, record that honestly instead of inventing a destination merely to avoid a missing page.