Entity gating
The single control that stops a dynamic route from generating an unbounded number of thin pages. Gate against an authoritative list, 404 everything else, and treat the list as data.
4 min read · updated 2026-07-26· last reviewed 2026-07-26
A route like /glossary/[term] that renders whatever slug it is given will render a page for every slug anyone requests. That includes slugs a crawler invented by mangling a URL, slugs from a broken internal link, and slugs an adversary generated deliberately.
Each of those is an indexable page with no content. A few hundred of them will change how the site is assessed, and you will not find them by looking at your own sitemap, because they were never in it.
The rest of "Entity gating"
805 words covering 3 sections, with the implementation code for 1 checks. The table of contents below is the full outline, so you can see exactly what is behind this.
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What this chapter covers
- An ungated dynamic route is an unbounded page generator
- The principle
- The implementation
- The authoritative list is data, not a database query
- The principle
- The implementation
- Do not accept partial or fuzzy matches
- The principle
- The implementation
Checks this chapter covers
Each one has a command you can run against your own site.