Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
I recently reported two doorway pages being used by a competitor. Within a couple of weeks, the sites were turned into restyled copies of
their main online store, and all domains retained their rankings within the top ten.
Has anyone else seen anything like this before? Is it common practice on Google?
Thanks in advance,
GG #*$!
All it had was an "enter our shop" link which pointed to a different site on a different domain.
The whole point of them was to filter people towards their main shop.
GG #*$!
Doorway pages are typically large sets of poor-quality pages where each page is optimized for a specific keyword or phrase. In many cases, doorway pages are written to rank for a particular phrase and then funnel users to a single destination.Whether deployed across many domains or established within one domain, doorway pages tend to frustrate users, and are in violation of our webmaster guidelines.
Google's aim is to give our users the most valuable and relevant search results. Therefore, we frown on practices that are designed to manipulate search engines and deceive users by directing them to sites other than the ones they selected, and that provide content solely for the benefit of search engines. Google may take action on doorway sites and other sites making use of these deceptive practice, including removing these sites from the Google index.
[google.com...]
Another illicit practice is to place "doorway" pages loaded with keywords on the client's site somewhere. The SEO promises this will make the page more relevant for more queries. This is inherently false since individual pages are rarely relevant for a wide range of keywords. More insidious, however, is that these doorway pages often contain hidden links to the SEO's other clients as well. Such doorway pages drain away the link popularity of a site and route it to the SEO and its other clients, which may include sites with unsavory or illegal content.[google.com...]
I think the key to understanding your situation is this - the content you saw as a doorway page no longer exists. Instead, it now sounds like a situation where Google is including more than one copy of the same content in the rankings.
That's something that usually doesn't last very long - however, Google right now seems to be in the middle of some major technical changes and lots of things aren't working the way they usually do. Also remember that Google often uses spam reports to improve their algorithm, rather than to take manual action.
This whole "reporting to Google" thing is very troubling, as to me it smacks of an "informer society". Yes I realize that some things should be reported -- malware or trojans on a webpage for example. But many other things that technically do no damage to anyone's computer do not meet that threshold. It's like seeing that a car parked in front of a restaurant has an expired inspection sticker, so you call the cops. Or hearing loud music from your neighbor's basement and suspect that he's smoking something, so you call the cops. It's Big Brotherism, but instead of Big Brother, it's Big Google, but in either case, someone's life could be damaged. I can see both sides of the issue, but as I said, I find it troubling, especially for something as minor as a so-called "doorway page".
<End my opinion>
There is a lot of "warfare" in some markets that involves trying to knock out competitors rather than simply outrank them - and the spam report is one weapon that gets deployed.
The idea of what is a doorway page is a very fuzzy judgment call. Some sites are designed to focus on just one aspect of an offering, and they also tend to work as a push page to a main site. If the content is useful and relevant to a query that it ranks for, then I don't see that alone as being deceptive.
For me the "doorway page" is a page that is showing up in my search for word "apple" results and when I click on the page title I see the weird stuff that got nothing to do with things like:
- apple computer
- kinds of apples
- how to grow apples
- airline ticket to visit Big Apple
- health benefits of apple
and so on.
So GlitterGoth you should think twice before you call your competitor' optimized pages "doorways" because you could be misunderstanding whole concept.
When is a door not a door?
When it's ajar. But seriously - about doorway pages...
[webmasterworld.com...]
In the 2003 discussion, I didn't get into the question of redirected doorways, which didn't apply to that discussion. Doorways that appear in the serps and redirect to another page are an area where Google has great objections.
I did, though, get into the question of integration into the rest of a site, and your perception that there could be something funny about an outboard page does have some historical foundation. But, you can't assume that an outboard page is spam. The page could also be ranking for legit reasons.
It was its own domain, packed with relevent keywords and bumph but no second level pages such as information or contact or antyhing like that.All it had was an "enter our shop" link...
Google shouldn't necessarily have an objection to a focused page with a visible link to another domain.
It's possible that the link juice that has helped both sets of doorways rank comes from a link network of some kind. If this were the case, Google would find this objectionable, but it might take time for them to algorithmically zap it.
Google generally reacts quickly to a report only when it's a situation as tedster describes, where, eg, adult content is served to kids. Otherwise, it can take a while.
I recently read that Bing doesn’t care about methods used, but the intent behind them. I think Google may have the same beliefs.
If this were actually the case, then 75% of the affiliates on the Internet would be deemed as doorway pages, especially the ones that work very hard on all pages to get you off of the page and over to the merchant page.
Thank you for clarifying Google's terms for me, and letting me know your thoughts on what should and should not count as doorway pages. I shall bear it in mind :)
Thank you again,
GG
By the way, the strange symbols after my name were actually "Xs" I think my use of three in a way of absent-minded gratitude may have set of the word-filter, for which I apologise.
