50 sites pointing to one - Allowed by Google?

[Kickedout]

I'm seeing a competitor selling ticket to different cities. He built 50 sites each one like this: ticketstocity1, ticketstocity2, and so on.
All sites are informative, contain 5 pages, about city and don't point to the true site, that sells the tickets.
50 sites pointing to one.

Those sites rank very well by the way.


Is that allowed by Google? Or is it something to report?

[chrisv1963]

I don't see why this would be a problem. You wrote that all sites are informative. If they are informative, then it is ok to rank well.

[lucy24]

All sites are informative, contain 5 pages, about city and don't point to the true site, that sells the tickets.
50 sites pointing to one.

Do they point or don't they?

[Sgt_Kickaxe]

Re: the title of this thread
Google has no say, they just rank what's there, and so of course it's "allowed".

Re: 50 sites broken down by city but all offering one service by one company
Doomed to failure in a post-Panda internet, not 100% failure but when the sites are viewed by a human they will start to look more and more like the network they are. Sub-domains would have been better with a core set of pages shared, imo.

[Kickedout]

I don't see why this would be a problem. You wrote that all sites are informative.

I do because is just a doorway. You host 50 pages saying: "visit Xcity where you can see X thing blabla, and buy in spamsite"
50 times. There's no reason for the existance of 50 different domains. All they have to do is spamsite with all "informative" content for 50 cities.

But since they do have better chance to collect traffic, they build 50 "informative" sites of 5 pages each to point 1 site.

If you were DMOZ editor you would be sending it to spam as "DOORWAY".

Are you really serious when you say you find no problem in building 50 sites of 5 pages each to end saying "buy in spamsite" each time?

[phranque]

from Google's Webmaster Guidelines:
http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=35769&topic=2370419 [support.google.com]

under Quality guidelines - specific guidelines:
http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=35769&topic=2370419#3

Avoid "doorway" pages created just for search engines [support.google.com], or other "cookie cutter" approaches such as affiliate programs with little or no original content [support.google.com].

it's pretty clear these are "doorways".
why report them?
they make useful targets...

[driller41]

Or is it something to report?

If I was to be charitable to you I would advise you to work on your own business first.

[indyank]

" little or no original content " is important and it cannot be ignored.As long as the individual sites are excellent with original, unique information they CANNOT be doorway pages.

But then there is always the risk of a casual Google observer marking them as doorway or what content they may consider as "original or unique" and how they attribute it to the right site.

[indyank]

I must also add that I am seeing several micro sites like these that have keyword based domain names doing very well in Google.

[Kickedout]

why report them?

cos they're spamming. And because are violating the rules since are doorways.

If I was to be charitable to you I would advise you to work on your own business first.

perhaps I am and don't like spam, what's wrong with that?