Are Index Pages Always Best Practice in Large Sites?

Traditional information structures for large sites (over 100K pages) make use of index pages, or section overview pages, placed at the top of a section hierarchy. There were good reasons to support this:

  1. They provide a one-page summary of the section content
  2. They provide a single target for inbound links on topics like Support, Services and About Us
  3. They improve SEO, because of the inbound and outbound links; and most of the section’s key terms are captured in one place; and because they sit at the top of the section hierarchy
  4. They avoid “headless” sections; some navigation schemas require a top page or landing page for the section
  5. Index pages are easier to navigate in mobile view and with screen readers than mega menus or accordion nav sets.

Lately, the use of index pages has been questioned by some of my colleagues.

Are there any reasons NOT to use index pages?

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