14 replies to this topic

[powerofeyes]

When I was going through the results of google i came across lots of doorway pages comfortably listed and ranked in google. I don't know how this is happening to a world no 1 search engine. When I learned about google it says we never allow doorway pages and their algorithm are written in such a way that they can sort out doorway pages and ban sites.
But that is not the case when i saw some doorway pages to sites rank very high in the google results.
i wonder how google calculates pagerank for these pages, i have hundreds of samples some of them are,

[URLs snipped: See [url="http://www.highrankings.com/forum/index.php?act=boardrules"]Guideline Number 9.[/url] ]

Can anyone comment on this and give me some explanations on this topic. I am an ethical SEO and this problem with google troubles me a lot. I always googlize my clients pages but this doorway pages worry me a lot.
thanks,
VIJAY :fart:

Edited by Jill, 28 September 2003 - 10:41 AM.

[Jill]

When I learned about google it says we never allow doorway pages and their algorithm are written in such a way that they can sort out doorway pages and ban sites.

Where's it say that, VIJAY, I've never seen Google say that anywhere.

Obviously, google doesn't want doorway pages, but that doesn't mean that they can find and ban every instance of them. In fact, they rarely ban any pages at all.

Jill

[powerofeyes]

Hello Jill,
Google might not directly say they it will ban your site. Then it is too harsh but you can see these guidelines from google which clearly says google will not tolerate all these stuff.
http://www.google.co...bmasters/2.html
This is where google has requested for complaints and a true ethical SEO will complaint about illegal way of cheating search engines.
http://www.google.co...spamreport.html
I am and admirer and fan of google and I want my favourite search engine to keep very high standards,
thanking you,
vijay

[chrishirst]

The examples you gave in my opinion don't qualify as doorway pages as they are part of the same domain, they have been created as landing pages with the express intent of getting a page with a keyword\phrase in the title indexed into the SERPs. With a bit of thought they could have been integrated into the site very simply. If you run an allinurl: search on the domains you'll find one identical page for each keyword.
Spam? Not really, maybe the implementation looks that way, the intent is only what SEO is about anyway (getting results for keywords\phrases), as I said with a bit more work to keep the overall look of the site it probably would be considered a job well done!
Maybe having the same meta description and body copy would be considered spammy though or maybe it's just the result of using some crappy software.

All that has happened is whoever has done the work to create the pages has somewhat conned the client, and the client maybe does not realise just how bad (cheap) the pages look. Obviously the same person\company (or software) has done the work on both sites.

I've just completed a similar operation for one client where every product they sell now has a page where the title,meta description, keywords and body copy are all tweaked to reflect the one product instead of having 20 products to a page, but at least I've made sure that each page can stand on it's own merit as part of the site.


Chris.

[Jill]

Vijay, Google does say this on those the guidelines page:

Reasons your site may not be included.

You employ doorway pages. Google does not encourage the use of doorway pages. We want to point users to content pages, not to doorways or splash screens.

(Bold emphasis mine.)

No where does google say they will ban every instance of a doorway page and that their results pages will be free from them.

Their guideline clearly is against them and they hope that you will not use them. That's hardly the same thing as every instance of them will be banned. Obviously they're not because they can't find them all, and they can't get their algorithm to always know the difference between a doorway page and a regular page if the doorway page creator is smart.

As to "ethical SEO's" always reporting spam sites, I disagree completely with that. It's Google's job to get their results in good order, not an SEO's job.

Jill

[SearchRank]

Doorway pages are like drug dealers - take one out and another rises in its place. The only way for Google or any search engine to really discredit these kind of pages lies in the fact that they are usually orphans, meaning there is no link, external or internal to them, thus the page itself doesn't have any Link Popularity.

I hate seeing search indices flooded with doorway pages as well but there are so many out there and sometimes they do provide a relevant result to someone's search query which is really the goal of search engines. So unfortunately they will still be here for awhile until all SEOs can learn that they are no longer effective as they once were.

[powerofeyes]

Hello Chris & Jill,
As far as a page standing on its own merit then its not a problem but design should also be considered not just a link saying home. But when you see the links I gave you it clearly says that it is a doorway page.
My question is do you like visiting such a page when you are searching for information. Personally i hate those kind of results and that is what i want the search engine to keep in mind while indexing.
Google especially is exceptionally good at this and i still wonder how all these pages rank very high in google search engine. One example I gave you ranks 2nd in about 30,000 results. This is what really surprised me,
Jill you are right google doesn't say it will ban sites. No one can say that actually but being a world no 1 search engine I want google to find a great algorithm to sort out and clean all these pages. Do you think these pages can bring out quality in a search engine definitely not, So I want my favourite search engine to sort these pages, i am not worried about other search engines. :halo:
According to Larry page founder of google. Google searches a site for 120 aspects why cant they include this aspect too. They can do it by Page Rank or what ever technology but i want to find a solution for this
thanks,
vijay

[OldWelshGuy]

If there are links BACK to that page from inside the site then it will never be classed as a doorway page. IMO a doorway page is a one way traffic page designed with no other intention other than to make a page rise up the SERP. Now if this page is indeed leading to a site that has the relevant content and it is linked back to from within that content how is Google supposed to define it as a Doorway page?

More importantly if the results are relevent to what the searcher is looking for who has lost out?

Don't get me wrong, i would never use a doorway page as the doorway page for me is the Index page, and if i have too many keyphrases then i just add more pages containing the information relevent to those phrases as i plan the site. Am I creating doorway pages? in effect they are no different to the pages you describe as spamming.

[powerofeyes]

Hello Wesley,

if this page is indeed leading to a site that has the relevant content and it is linked back to from within that content how is Google supposed to define it as a Doorway page?

From this quote. The problem starts here. This page which I am describing as doorway page do connect to the page which has relevant contents that is the only thing this page does. But when you go to the main site you cannot find any link to this page. So what do you say about this. If you want to see examples ill send you some through private message if you request for it. I am not supposed to post it here,
thanks,
VIJAY.

[OldWelshGuy]

My understanding (and i am sure i will be corrected if wrong) is that Google in particular does NOT like orphan pages, with at the very least a link back to them from within the site concerned. From experience (I used a splash landing page a while ago) after a while this page was dropped from the rankings, even though it was the index page.

I assume now having grown older and wiser (in some departments anyhow) that it was dropped because there were no links to it as it was treated as an irrelevent page by the algo's

[powerofeyes]

Hello welsh,
So you say these pages will be dropped from the index. Let me wait and see I am seeing these pages for the past 2 to 3 months ill wait to see what google does to these pages,
thanks,
VIJAY.
(WEB PROMOTIONS)..

[Limin]

I was contacted by a firm a couple of weeks ago that was marketing basically doorway pages in conjunction with PPC. What they were offering is this.

Send $1,500 to them and they will create a "mini site" that will rank in the top 3 to 10. $500 of the 1,500 will go to the setup of the "mini site". Then the $1,000 will go to the PPC at .10 a click. They would charge .10 for each click that went to your "real" site.

I discussed this with the guy on the phone for about 30 minutes as I was real interested in concept/scam. His sales pitch was that the .10 was probably much less than I was paying Google and the people that clicked thru to my site would be more qualified. He pointed me to examples of his "mini sites". Basically these were sites made up of about 5 pages specifically designed to rank high.

He insisted that they were not "doorway" pages. Well, to each his own. IMO they were. It seemed to me that my money would be best spent just optimizing my site. Why would I want to pay someone PPC, when I could obtain the same thing by optimizing my own site. To be honest, I was impressed with his imagination, but don't agree with his methods.

Oh, I might ad that he said it would take upto 6 months to work. Takes time to reach the high page rank, etc, etc. His office was in Las Vegas. Now, I like Vegas, but my thoughts were I would be better off playing Black Jack than giving him my money.

[Jill]

Good for you, Dave, to know better than do something dumb like that!

As to this:

To be honest, I was impressed with his imagination, but don't agree with his methods.

He certainly didn't make it up. It's one of the oldest tricks in the book. Companies have been doing the same sort of thing since the search engines first came into existence.

Jill

[SearchRank]

I was contacted by a firm a couple of weeks ago that was marketing basically doorway pages in conjunction with PPC.  What they were offering is this.
...1,500 will go to the setup of the "mini site"...

And I would imagine that these "mini sites" would stay under their control? That way they can hold people hostage to paying, otherwise they can kill the mini sites or even worse, direct traffic to your competition.

You also say "they contacted you?" I would always be leary of supposed SEOs that are out "contacting people" either through email spam or telemarketing. They must not have any work to do or clients to serve so they are fishing.

Good "eye" avoiding this company. You'd be better to go to Vegas and gamble. If you lost your money, at least you'd have fun losing it.

[fred]

About 3 years ago the company I work for hired such company there was no ppc but they charged by positions obtained like

30$ for each first position
25 for 2-5 top position

etc ....

we never paid them simply because they created 3 mini sites for us and nobody visited our real site , they said that when engine would index their site they would redirect to ours .

wow can you say non ethical techniques.

so we never paid them ( I was told) because their site was ranking well not ours.

any how I got to be the company seo because of this adventure.