Search Results Inside Search Results: Ghost Pages, Long-Tail SEO, and the AI Era Playbook

Google has a long-tail problem—and it’s not going away.

For years, Google has said that a meaningful chunk of daily searches are completely new. You’ll often see the number quoted as ~20% of queries being never searched before (Google has historically cited ~15% in public talks; the industry commonly rounds up when discussing the scale of novelty).

That single fact explains a surprising amount of modern SEO: most queries are not “keywords,” they’re one-off questions.

And whenever there’s an infinite supply of long-tail queries, there’s an incentive to mass-produce pages that “match” them—even if the pages don’t truly answer them.

The long tail wasn’t invented by SEOs—it was forced by reality

The long tail exists because humans are messy:

• We add context (“for beginners”, “in 2026”, “near me”).
• We combine concepts (“best CRM for dentists using AI automations”).
• We search with uncertainty (“what’s that thing that…”).
• We phrase the same intent in thousands of unique ways.

When the web doesn’t have a perfect document for a novel query, search engines face a tough tradeoff: show something imperfect, or show nothing.

That “gap” created a predictable opportunity:

If no one has written the perfect page for a query, the site that can generate a page-shaped object for that query has a chance to rank.

And that’s where “search results in search results” comes in.

What are “Search Results in Search Results” (aka Ghost Pages)?

In English SEO circles, you’ll see a few labels for the same phenomenon:

• “Search Results in Search Results”: Google SERPs contain pages that are essentially another site’s search results page.
• “Ghost Pages”: pages that look relevant (query in the URL/title), but the on-page value is thin, generic, or empty.
• Indexed internal search: /search?q=... or /search/keyword/ pages that get crawled and indexed at scale.

Technically, internal search creates an infinite URL space:

• /search?q=wireless+earbuds+for+small+ears
• /search?q=best+crm+for+nonprofits
• /search?q=how+to+remove+coffee+stains+from+linen

If those URLs return 200 OK and contain a keyword-heavy title like:

“Search results for ‘best crm for nonprofits’”

…then the page can become indexable, linkable, and rankable.

Why can these pages rank at all?

Because the ranking system often has to infer value with imperfect signals:

• Literal matching: the query appears in the URL/title/H1.
• Authority inheritance: pages live under a trusted domain (big brand, .edu, .gov, major publisher).
• User signals: for some intents (inspiration, browsing, discovery), a “list of things” can satisfy users better than a single article.
• Soft-404 confusion: a page can “feel” like “no results” to humans but still look like a normal page to crawlers.

Google’s own documentation is pretty blunt here: site owners should generally prevent internal search results from being indexed because they’re usually not useful as standalone search results and they waste crawl budget.

• See: Google Search Central — internal search results guidance (and related “avoid indexing internal search results” recommendations across Search Central docs).

So why is the web full of them anyway? Because this tactic has two faces: one legitimately helpful, one toxic.

The two faces of this tactic: pSEO vs. abuse

1) The legitimate version: Programmatic SEO (pSEO)

The “good” version isn’t “search spam.” It’s database-to-page publishing: you have structured data, real inventory, and real user value—then you generate pages that help people.

Examples that tend to work because they’re genuinely useful:

• Yelp / TripAdvisor-style pages: “best Italian restaurants in Boston” is effectively city = Boston + category = Italian, but the page is rich with reviews, photos, filters, and comparisons.
• Zillow-style pages: location + property type + pricing trends + inventory.
• Wise-style converter pages: “USD to EUR” pages that include real rates, charts, and explanations (not a generic paragraph).

These pages are “search-like,” but they’re not empty. They reduce friction for users and help Google satisfy a specific intent.

2) The toxic version: Ghost pages + Site reputation abuse

The “bad” version is when the page exists primarily to harvest impressions:

• Empty or near-empty internal search pages (“No results found” + boilerplate recommendations).
• Keyword injection on trusted domains (a form of parasite SEO / site reputation abuse), where attackers (or shady affiliates) exploit a site’s internal search endpoint to generate millions of indexable URLs like:
  • example.edu/search?q=best+crypto+casino+2026

Even if the host site has no relevant content, the domain’s reputation can temporarily “carry” the URL into the index. This is one reason reputation abuse has become a major enforcement area.

In March 2024, Google explicitly expanded spam policies that speak directly to this ecosystem:

• Scaled content abuse (mass-generated pages whose primary purpose is manipulating rankings)
• Site reputation abuse (third-party content published to exploit a host site’s ranking signals)

Reference:

• Google Search spam policies (including scaled content abuse / site reputation abuse)

Why Pinterest can look like a “ghost page” and still win

Pinterest is the classic “love it or hate it” example in English SERPs.

For many “inspiration” queries (home decor, outfits, wedding themes), what users want is not one perfect answer—it’s a high-density browse experience. A Pinterest board or tag page can act like “internal search results,” yet still satisfy intent better than a single blog post.

In other words: sometimes “search results inside search results” is exactly what the user wants.

That’s why the right question isn’t “Is this tactic allowed?”

It’s:

Does this page reliably deliver unique value for the intent, or is it a keyword-shaped container?

The AI era changes the payoff (and the risk)

AI makes it cheap to generate pages. That also means Google has to be more aggressive in filtering them.

If your “strategy” is:

• generate 50,000 near-identical pages,
• swap city names and headings,
• add a few AI paragraphs,
• and hope long-tail clicks pay the bill…

…you’re competing in a race to the bottom against infinite supply.

Meanwhile, AI-powered search experiences (and LLM citations) tend to reward:

• clearer structure,
• stronger evidence,
• deeper explanations,
• original data,
• and trustworthy authorship.

Thin “ghost pages” are the worst input for AI summarization—because there’s nothing real to cite.

What we should learn: wrong vs. right

Here’s a practical checklist you can apply to any SEO plan.

A simple rule of thumb

If you removed the keyword from the title and URL, would the page still be worth visiting?

• If no, you’re building ghost pages.
• If yes, you’re building productized content.

The playbook for long-tail growth (without becoming spam)

If you want long-tail coverage in 2026 and beyond, optimize like a product team:

• Start from entities, not keywords: build pages around things that exist (locations, categories, tools, use cases, templates) and make them genuinely useful.
• Design for “browse intent”: for discovery queries, invest in filtering, grouping, and comparisons—don’t hide behind a thin “results” page.
• Keep internal search internal: your search box is for navigation, not indexing. Use noindex on search result pages and prevent infinite parameter crawl.
• Be strict about empty states: “no results” pages should not be indexable, and often shouldn’t return 200 OK.
• Measure usefulness: if users bounce fast, that’s your answer. The long tail rewards relevance, but it punishes disappointment.

Closing thought

The long tail is real because human language is infinite.

The winning strategy isn’t to generate infinite pages.

It’s to build a finite set of high-signal, data-backed pages that scale because they’re grounded in reality—pages that both search engines and AI systems can confidently trust, retrieve, and cite.