Google has announced that they will soon be launching a ranking adjustment that will negatively impact doorway pages on websites, as well as potentially impacting an entire site if Google feels there are enough spam doorway pages on a site to warrant it. And this ranking change is coming into effect soon.
Doorway pages have been around since the early days of SEO, although they also worked much better back in the day. But with the rise of local search, there has definitely been a resurgence of websites with thousands of doorway pages so they can rank for any Small Town USA with the keyword of a business type.
Entire site could be impacted
It is important to note that if there are an abundance of these doorway pages, even if the rest of the site is high quality, that the entire site could be impacted by the change. Brian White, from the Google Webspam Team says “Sites with large and well-established doorway campaigns might see a broad impact from this change.”
Impacting Internationally
As Google has been posting the updated doorway pages information and ranking adjustment notice on their non-English Webmaster Central Blogs, this change will be rolling out globally. But it isn’t known if they plan to start with one country or language, as they sometimes do first as they begin rolling something out.
Duplicate pages
Google is also taking a special look at pages that could be considered somewhat duplicate, where similar pages already exist on the website and these duplicate pages are created for the sole purpose of getting additional traffic, often done through longtail or similar keywords.
Lack of navigation
Google is also considering pages that are standalone, where it is next to impossible for a user to be able to navigate the rest of the website, as a doorway page. While there are plenty of legitimate reasons a website might have pages that are standalone, the fact that Google is looking at them algorithmically could mean that they could get caught in this new ranking factor and negatively impact those pages and perhaps the entire site.
Special note about pay per click landing pages
Pay per click landing pages – particularly ones that take a minimalist approach – can also be mistaken for doorway pages by search engines. And with this change having the potential to impact an entire site, you should definitely block Googlebot from these landing pages (but do allow the AdWords bot for quality score purposes).
Why now?
Why is Google taking a stand against these now? Local is clearly playing a big role in this. But mobile is also likely a pretty big driving force between the change. Since so many Google searchers do local searches, if the search results are cluttered with spam doorway pages, making it harder to find actual businesses in any town or city, then that is a poor user experience for searchers and could drive those searchers to another search engine. And this is something that Google really doesn’t want to do, particularly with Yahoo chiseling away at Google’s search share thanks to the Firefox deal.
When?
Unfortunately Google doesn’t say exactly when this ranking adjustment will come into play, other than “soon.” So if your site has a host of doorway pages, you should start removing them – or at the very least noindexing them – ASAP.
What is the nitty gritty word-for-word on exactly what changed?
For those of you that love to read into Google’s nuances of announcements and changes, here is both the old version of the doorway pages support page, followed by the new one.
The old version
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.
Therefore, Google frowns on practices that are designed to manipulate search engines and deceive users by directing them to sites other than the one 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 practices, including removing these sites from Google’s index.
Some examples of doorways include:
- Having multiple domain names targeted at specific regions or cities that funnel users to one page
- Templated pages made solely for affiliate linking
- Multiple pages on your site with similar content designed to rank for specific queries like city or state names
And here is their new and improved version.
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
So if your site has doorway pages or simply pages that could be mistaken by Google’s algorithms as being doorway pages, you will want to ensure that you fix them as soon as possible, and before the “soon” arrives.
Jennifer Slegg
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Campbell McArthur says
Good morning Jennifer,
At this point I have to ask, will local city pages that are created in order to help organic rankings for neighboring cities outside of the business location going to be viewed as Door Way pages now?
In my professional opinion, I do not see GOOGLE cleaning up the web I see GOOGLE creating a 2 classification of masters and slaves that will ultimately lead to a platform that will be controlled by only large corporations and a system of racketeering that will force you to “PAY” Google and these other large corporations in order just to be semi visible. Sorry but anyone with half a brain cell should be able to see for many years now that this is EXACTLY the way that it is headed. Just like our corrupt politicians, GOOGLE wraps itself in the American Flag and comes in the guise of Democracy and Freedom but…In actual fact, GOOGLE is a Wolf in sheeps clothing!
Jennifer Slegg says
The problem is that users are ending up on those doorway pages for businesses who set up pages “for neighboring cities outside of the business location” when they are looking for a business located within the city or town. Poor user experience for searchers means Google is going to do something about it so those searchers don’t decide Bing or Yahoo is a better search option.
In a nutshell, yes those pages you made “for neighboring cities outside of the business location” will probably be viewed as doorway pages.
Campbell McArthur says
Thank you very much for your reply back in regards to my question Jennifer.
Yes, I was indeed afraid that this was going to become the reality of the situation as google just loves having webmasters endure the constant game of hop scotch backwards and the never ending game of tail chase as they dictate what can and cannot be done on the internet. Funny, I never once saw a vote taken to the people in order to proclaim google the supreme overlord of the internet.
I have been analyzing data on Google intensively for the past 6 years now and it is my firm belief that Google has been and ‘is” deliberately destabilizing local business economies in order to bankrupt this country.
Jennifer Slegg says
Well, bottom line is that Google is only the top because it is what people use to search… if everyone decided to switch to Bing, Yahoo or even DuckDuckGo, then that search engine would seemingly be the overlord 🙂 When I got into this industry, Google didn’t even exist yet, Yahoo was a powerhouse, and Ask Jeeves was a real search engine not an arbitrage machine, so dominance can shift over time… but Google is trying to make sure they keep users happy so that shift doesn’t happen again.
Brian Barwig says
It will be interesting to see how this impacts local, as well as national businesses. Ive been noticing a good amount of poor quality content, including doorway pages, appearing on local sites recently.
Im curious to see how this effects several industries. For instance, what will insurance companies do since almost all of the information for insurance agents is similar across the entire spectrum of the company. What about car companies and lawyers who may have similar issues.Will the doorway algo impact e-commerce sites as well since many products have similar features/specs/content? Will the minimal differences be enough for G to consider the content not thin and duplicate?
Graham Ware says
So the next “blackhat” war will be creating enough door way pages to competitor websites in effort to get them penalized. *Sighs*
Sometimes I wish Google didn’t always let the cat out of the bag. I personally think this update will target only specific sites (not all sites) based on existing algorithms and Google has an array of lists from Disavow and reconsideration that will likely be the first to “test” target this on…
My Two cents.
Jennifer Slegg says
Well, unless someone hacks your server and adds a ton of doorway pages to your site, this change isn’t something that can be done via negative SEO. It is strictly an on-site thing – a competitor can’t make doorway pages on another site to hurt a competitor with this particular ranking adjustment.
Filipe Schaab says
This lack of navigation is driving me crazy. Have a client who has lots of hotsites which users are redirected when they search for specific terms. For instance, you search “Black Sneakers” and our internal search redirect the user to the “/black-sneakers” page.
They add a huge experience, but some of them are not linked at all.
Not sure how to handle with that. Any insights would be great! 🙂
Nice post, by the way!