Linking a doorway site to main site

will a spider follow a redirect?

[mona]

I make doorway sites - a main page with 4 sub pages to focus on specific keywords.

I always link these sites from the main site, because I know certain SEs, such as Google, won't index orphaned pages.

These site have all been indexed. Now, here is my question.

The site I am now working on redirects to a mirror site. Or shall I say, the site that I will be adding the outgoing links to, redirects to a mirror site and I've never dealt with this before.

Will a spider be able to follow the link to the doorway site still?

(I don't know how well I've explained myself, so please let me know if I need to clarify.)

[drbill]

I have found that if you make the redirect slow like 10 sec the spider will follow it.. Place a link on that page to the mirror page as well and they will help the spider get to the next page.. Too fast and the spider will think it is Spam...

Anyone else got any other info?

[mona]

Thanks, I'll give it a try.

[Macguru]

Hi Mona,

If we are talking about JavaScript redirect, spiders will not follow them and some HTML link is mandatory.

[mona]

Hmmm...I don't know for sure, but my guess would be that it is. The programmers are pretty java-happy around here;) I'll have to ask.

[mona]

They said it was an html redirect with a zero second delay. I asked them to make the redirect longer. We'lll see how it works. thx

[Macguru]

If the HTML redirect smells like "meta refresh" run away! A lot of spiders are programmed to also do so.

JS redirects are better. Just to be on the safe side, can you also ask the "java-happy" persons not to put them "on page"? Calling some JS from elsewere is more cautious.

The line reads like this <script type="text/javascript" language="JavaScript"src="putscriptnamehere.js"></script>

Also, make sure there is not too much on page "java-happy" stuff before the spiders get the real goodies. :-)

A server redirect will be followed by some spiders.

[Ove]

If the HTML redirect smells like "meta refresh" run away!

i have bad experiens of that our union got that on the index and the site was not listed in many se i took that away and did a link from index to the rest of the pages and with very good results so i would never use the meta refresh

Ove

[bufferzone]

If you absolutly must use HTML redirect, make them very slow, say 30 sec, otherwise some spiders might be scared off.

IMHO the best doorway pages, are pages that does not need redirect, but work as an extra door to your site, with real content, made for human eyes also. Make prominent links to your main indes.htm and make it clear for the user that this is a sidedoor (with good content). Many sidedoors with good content and interlinked will make a great trapway to draw users in and keep them in

[Macguru]

Bufferzone, I agree with you description of a doorway. But it is not the case here.

The reason why spiders are specifically programmed to run away from meta refresh is that some "industry" abused from it's usage. The delay usually used in such "industry" are far longer than 30 seconds.

External JS is good, server pointing is better, simple and obvious graphics, that user choose to click on even better.

Meta refresh is a no go.

my .02

[netcommr]

bufferzone, he is very very wise!!!

I think doorway page is a bad term, try thinking of them as extended content pages and include them with your site. They rank so much better and the whole process is so much easier. Besides you'll sleep better not having to worry about if your refresh is 3 seconds off, does google now read java..ahh sheep 1 sheep 2 sheep 3...

[Marcia]

From what I've seen this past week or so, I don't believe that spiders will follow Javascript redirects at all. Not Googlebot, anyway.

To be honest, I'm not clear what purpose that mirror site is serving.

[mona]

Thanks to everyone for your replies, but I think I may have not been clear enough.

The doorway site does not redirect.

What they did here was make a mirror site of the main site for promotional purposes.

At first there were just two main sites that were exactly the same. Last week, the company completely changed their site.

Noone here has time to update our mirror site to look like the new one. So, they put a redirect on it to go to their site.

I can only add links to our site (that is now redirecting) for this new doorway site.

I hope that clarifies things a bit. Sorry to be confusing.