G and doorway pages

have they fallen back in love with them?

[jakegotmail]

I have noticed in my industry authoritative sites getting passed now by doorway pages. Has anyone else seen the same trend lately?

It seems google has changed something in there algo recently that has favored them.

I also see a lot of our competitors abusing them again, to there success. Thought this was one of the oldest tricks in the book, that google devalued years ago.

Im stumped on this one. Any thoughts?

[sublime1]

By doorway pages, do you mean those stupid pages that take an extra click to get past in order to get to the web site? For example "Welcome to my site -- click here to enter", or the even more annoying "Watch this 5 minute Flash ad with sound while hunting for the tiny text that says Skip Ad" :-)

I don't think Google or anyone (except advertisers) think these are a good thing. My recollection of what was considered bad were cases where sites put up pages of content of one kind that would redirect to the "real" page of the site, unless the visitor was a search engine.

The former is annoying; the latter is considered deceptive by google. I don't think either perception has changed, and I don't see any indication in sites whose SERPs I watch (and that do the flash ad variant) that there have been any significant changes lately.

[koan]

The former is annoying; the latter is considered deceptive by google.

The former would be called "splash page", the latter would be "doorway pages".

[followgreg]

I think that he really means Doorway.
I've noticed an increase lately.
It all comes down to the tweak they made a few weeks ago, it allows old dirty tricks to work like back in 2002 again.

It's unfortunate but they also let don't seem to b able to filter anymore small tricks such as: spam text much below the fold or in the footer, irrelavant outgoing links (especially on homepage), identical backlinks (which ties in textlink brokerage) and more...

It's extremely frustrating as webmaster and as a user. But they seem to keep it that way, there must be some financial benefit I guess.

If you ask me I find the current SERP's a short term type of strategy. I don't see the point, it's been a few weeks now so it may not be just a test.

[jakegotmail]

Ok. I totally called this wrong, but what I saw and was trying to convey apparently is exactly to a T what Aaron wall noted he saw yesterday on his blog. Hope he doesnt mind me quoting, would throw him a link, but yea....

"Not sure if it is correct to call it an algorithm update, but a number of keywords I watch I have seen large authority sites get demoted in favor of smaller niche players with spammy keyword rich backlink profiles. I am seeing things like spammy new(ish) lead generation sites outranking fortune 500s and long standing industry association sites."

[followgreg]

I happen to fully agree with what he is saying.

Google is currently placing really low quality sites on top of others, VERY often.
Current SERP's don't make any sense whatsoever in terms of quality.

Feels like a mistake of Microsoft-proportion. After all that's what they are after correct?

Just that MS releases fixes....will Google do?

[jakegotmail]

greg i am assuming they will. waiting anxiously to see if that is the case...

[Bewenched]

What I'm seeing is sites that will build a page specific for one search, once google finds them then they are removed and forwarded via 301 to the real page.

I'm talking within 1-2 days of googles cache date they are forwarding these doorway pages to a real product landing page.