Google SEO Algorithm Penalizes Sites with Doorway Pages

Google recently releases an search engine update to kill the websites with doorway pages that spamdex(spam-index) their databases. Google believes that these doorway pages are purposefully constructed more likely for search engines than for humans.

What are doorway pages?

Pages constructed with different domains and pages with different targeted keywords that funnel visitors to actual pages(with actual information) are called doorway pages. Spammers’ sole purpose of creating such sites is to manipulate the search engines to drive traffic to their actual informative page.

As we know, manipulating the search engine is strictly against the policies and so Google will take it seriously as a black-hat SEO practice thereby penalizing the site.

How doorway pages actually work?

When a visitor clicks through the search result(which is a doorway page) to access the information on that page(which is disguised), it will be automatically redirected to another page.

We have a long-standing view that doorway pages that are created solely for search engines can harm the quality of the user’s search experience. –Google

However, creating healthy doorway pages through permanent redirects that are friendly to search engines is allowed.

How doorway pages degrade user experience?

Whereas, webmasters using this black-hat strategy will use a <meta> tag or script redirection to send visitors to actual page is against Google polices.

For example, if Google shows the results of the same page with different masks(doorway pages) in SERP, user clicks on the first result and if he don’t gets any information desired for, will come back and click on 2nd result. If he finds the same irrelevant information, he will get frustrated and leaves Google.

Google wants to put an end to this and don’t wanted to loose traffic for other search engines.

Does your site have doorway pages, accidentally?

Every search engine algorithm update gives chills in the spine for any webmaster. Though you always follows Google webmaster guidelines, it is better to check if any flaws were made by mistake or accidentally in the past on your site.

Check if,

• You have over optimized your site pages for search engines with multiple faces that affect your visitor's experience.
• You have created mocking pages to optimize the original content page.
• Content on your pages sorts out resulting in aggregation, as per location or product searched for.
• You have created links to a particular page that is never linked to a menu or any other part of the site.

You can seek the help of webmaster help forums if needed. Also, please leave your thoughts about it.