Doorway Pages are in Google's Crosshairs


doorway_penalty_google.jpg Google sent out an ominous warning regarding new ranking adjustments being put into place to restrict the number of Doorway pages within the search results. Going so far as to warn that:

"Sites with large and well-established doorway campaigns might see a broad impact from this change."

If we've learned anything from Google over the years it's that they tend to cast a wide net catching a lot of legitimate sites in the process of weeding out the offending ones.

Around the same time, Google also quietly updated their definition of what a doorway page looked like within their guidelines broadening it to perhaps further widen the net:

Doorways are sites or pages created to rank highly for specific search queries. They are bad for users because they can lead to multiple similar pages in user search results, where each result ends up taking the user to essentially the same destination. They can also lead users to intermediate pages that are not as useful as the final destination.

Here are some examples of doorways:

  • Having multiple domain names or pages targeted at specific regions or cities that funnel users to one page
  • Pages generated to funnel visitors into the actual usable or relevant portion of your site(s)
  • Substantially similar pages that are closer to search results than a clearly defined, browseable hierarchy

If you wonder whether your site may feel the squeeze, Google encouraged site owner's to ask themselves the following questions to determine if their pages could be affected:

  • Is the purpose to optimize for search engines and funnel visitors into the actual usable or relevant portion of your site, or are they an integral part of your site's user experience?
  • Are the pages intended to rank on generic terms yet the content presented on the page is very specific?
  • Do the pages duplicate useful aggregations of items (locations, products, etc.) that already exist on the site for the purpose of capturing more search traffic?
  • Are these pages made solely for drawing affiliate traffic and sending users along without crea...

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