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Tag: doorway pages

  • Google “Believes” The Doorway Page Algorithm Update Has Rolled Out

    Google “Believes” The Doorway Page Algorithm Update Has Rolled Out

    Last month, Google announced that it’s cracking down on doorway pages with a new ranking adjustment. At the time, the company said this would launch soon, but didn’t give an exact time frame.

    It appears that now, the update has already been rolled out. SEOs and webmasters have apparently been largely unable to tell if the the update ever launched, but the subject came up in a Webmaster hangout with Google’s John Mueller, in which he said, “I believe that has rolled out, yea.”

    You never really get a firm answer on these things from Mueller. It’s always “I think” or “I believe,” and sometimes that has led to seemingly contradictory statements from Google, but unless we hear otherwise, we’re just going to have to assume that Mueller is right.

    Here’s the video (via Search Engine Roundtable):

    Barry Schwartz at Search Engine Roundtable, a known forum tracker, says he’s been tracking a “ton of forums” (both whitehat and blackhat), and people are still asking if the update has really launched.

    In case you’re wondering what this update means exactly, doorway pages have historically been known as pages created specifically to get in search results for various queries, and then send users to a different page.

    This practice has long been against Google’s quality guidelines, but that’s hardly stopped people from trying it. In 2005, Google’s Matt Cutts advised people not to hire an “assclown SEO that makes doorway pages with sneaky redirects,” and that advice still holds up today, apparently more than ever.

    Five years ago, Google started sending webmasters messages when Webmaster Tools detected doorway pages on their sites.

    “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,” says Brian White from Google’s Webspam team. “For example, searchers might get a list of results that all go to the same site. So if a user clicks on one result, doesn’t like it, and then tries the next result in the search results page and is taken to that same site that they didn’t like, that’s a really frustrating experience.”

    Google has “freshened” its definition of doorway pages in the Quality Guidelines:

    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.

    Remember when Google launched the Panda update, and gave webmasters a list of questions they could ask themselves to determine if a page is high quality? Last month, they provided a list of questions to determine if your pages may be seen as doorway pages:

    • Is the purpose to optimize for search engines and funnel visitors into the actual usable or relevant portion of your site, or are they an integral part of your site’s user experience?
    • Are the pages intended to rank on generic terms yet the content presented on the page is very specific?
    • Do the pages duplicate useful aggregations of items (locations, products, etc.) that already exist on the site for the purpose of capturing more search traffic?
    • Are these pages made solely for drawing affiliate traffic and sending users along without creating unique value in content or functionality?
    • Do these pages exist as an “island?” Are they difficult or impossible to navigate to from other parts of your site? Are links to such pages from other pages within the site or network of sites created just for search engines?

    “Over time, we’ve seen sites try to maximize their ‘search footprint’ without adding clear, unique value,” says White. “These doorway campaigns manifest themselves as pages on a site, as a number of domains, or a combination thereof.”

    According to White, sites with “large and well-established doorway campaigns” may notice a significant impact from the adjustment.

    This update hasn’t received nearly as much as attention as another major Google update that started rolling out this week. Businesses who don’t have mobile-friendly sites are going to start feeling the heat from that one if they haven’t already.

  • Google Just Announced Another New Ranking Adjustment

    Google Just Announced Another New Ranking Adjustment

    Google just announced that it is cracking down on doorway pages with a new ranking adjustment, which will launch soon.

    Do you think doorways pages have been a noticeable problem in search results? Share your thoughts in the comments.

    Doorway pages have historically been known as pages created specifically to get in search results for various queries, and then send users to a different page. Here’s Google’s instant answer for what they are:

    This practice has long been against Google’s quality guidelines, but that’s hardly stopped people from trying it. In 2005, Google’s Matt Cutts advised people not to hire an “assclown SEO that makes doorway pages with sneaky redirects,” and that advice still holds up today, apparently more than ever.

    Five years ago, Google started sending webmasters messages when Webmaster Tools detected doorway pages on their sites.

    “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,” says Brian White from Google’s Webspam team. “For example, searchers might get a list of results that all go to the same site. So if a user clicks on one result, doesn’t like it, and then tries the next result in the search results page and is taken to that same site that they didn’t like, that’s a really frustrating experience.”

    Google has “freshened” its definition of doorway pages in the Quality Guidelines. It’s not exactly the same as the definition from the Wikipedia-based instant answer, so this is the one you’ll really want to pay attention to:

    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

    Remember when Google launched the Panda update, and gave webmasters a list of questions they could ask themselves to determine if a page is high quality? Well, they’ve provided a list of questions to determine if your pages may be seen as doorway pages now. Luckily this list isn’t as long:

    • Is the purpose to optimize for search engines and funnel visitors into the actual usable or relevant portion of your site, or are they an integral part of your site’s user experience?
    • Are the pages intended to rank on generic terms yet the content presented on the page is very specific?
    • Do the pages duplicate useful aggregations of items (locations, products, etc.) that already exist on the site for the purpose of capturing more search traffic?
    • Are these pages made solely for drawing affiliate traffic and sending users along without creating unique value in content or functionality?
    • Do these pages exist as an “island?” Are they difficult or impossible to navigate to from other parts of your site? Are links to such pages from other pages within the site or network of sites created just for search engines?

    I think this is mostly common sense stuff for those familiar with Google’s guidance throughout the years, but it never hurts to have clear, concise language to refer to. Some must have been having success with this type of content anyway to have Google implement a new ranking adjustment.

    “Over time, we’ve seen sites try to maximize their ‘search footprint’ without adding clear, unique value,” says White. “These doorway campaigns manifest themselves as pages on a site, as a number of domains, or a combination thereof.”

    According to White, sites with “large and well-established doorway campaigns” may notice a significant impact from the adjustment.

    It’s nice to see Google announcing algorithm changes these days. They don’t always do that. There for a while, they were releasing monthly lists of changes, but eventually stopped doing so, claiming people had grown bored with them.

    Last month, Google announced that a new mobile ranking signal had gone in to effect, and that another one would take hold in April.

    Is the doorway page ranking adjustment overdue? Tell us what you think.

  • Google Penguin Update: Seriously, Avoid Doorway Pages

    If you want to avoid Google’s Penguin update (or recover from it), you’re going to have to make sure your site falls in line with Google’s quality guidelines. We’ve been posting various articles on these guidelines, such as:

    Google Penguin Update: Don’t Forget About Duplicate Content

    Google Penguin Update: A Lesson In Cloaking

    Google Penguin Update Recovery: Hidden Text And Links

    Recover From Google Penguin Update: Get Better At Links

    Google Penguin Update: 12 Tips Directly From Google

    Google Penguin Update Recovery: Getting Better At Keywords

    One of Google’s guidelines is: “Avoid ‘doorway’ pages created just for search engines, or other ‘cookie cutter’ approaches such as affiliate programs with little or no original content.”

    So, let’s look at exactly what Google has to say about doorway pages (from Google’s help center):

    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’s Matt Cutts recently posted a video confirming that Google doesn’t consider tweets from Twitter accounts that post every article from a site to be doorway pages.

    It might seem strange that someone would even ask about that:

    @AnnieCushing
    Annie Cushing    @mattcutts Someone actually asked that? 6 days ago via TweetDeck ·  Reply ·  Retweet ·  Favorite · powered by @socialditto

    @mattcutts
    Matt Cutts    @AnnieCushing *shrug* I can’t help what people ask. 🙂 5 days ago via web ·  Reply ·  Retweet ·  Favorite · powered by @socialditto

    …but, as Cutts has suggested more than once in recent memory, people shouldn’t have to be SEO experts or worry too much about SEO to still be found in Google, if the quality and relevance is there.

    Also, as Google has admitted in the past, no algorithm is perfect, and when they launch a major update that impacts a lot of sites, webmasters who don’t know what they did wrong (if in fact they did do something wrong) are looking for any possible thing that Google’s imperfect algorithm might have found questionable.

    They say, “There’s no such thing as a stupid question.”

    If it were all so simple, Cutts wouldn’t have any reason to record endless Webmaster Help videos.

    Anyhow, Google views doorway pages as those who are deceptively leading users to low quality specifically-optimized pages, and that’s what you want to avoid doing. Just don’t use pages designed to take users to places they’re not trying to go. That’s where they’ll get you.

    In that particular guideline, Google says to avoid appoaches with “little or no original content.” That’s an important thing to consider, as well. Whereas Penguin is designed to target sites violating the quality guidelines, this could get you in trouble there, but it could also get you in trouble with the ever-refreshing Panda update (2 refreshes in April alone), which is focused specifically on content quality.

    Google actually has a help center article specifically defining “little or no original content,” where the company says, “One of the most important steps in improving your site’s ranking in Google search results is to ensure that it contains plenty of rich information that includes relevant keywords, used appropriately, that indicate the subject matter of your content.”

    “However, some webmasters attempt to improve their page’s ranking and attract visitors by creating pages with many words but little or no authentic content,” Google adds. “Google will take action against domains that try to rank more highly by just showing scraped or other auto-generated pages that don’t add any value to users. ”

    Google goes on to give examples as being: thin affiliate sites (noting that being an affiliate is no problem as long as there’s added value), doorway pages, auto-generated content and scraped content.

    Here’s a good piece of advice Cutts gave on his personal blog back in 2005: “Do not hire an assclown SEO that makes doorway pages with sneaky redirects.”

    He also offered the following advice a few months later:

    If someone came to you and said “I want to rent out your mail server. I’d like to send out some emails from your server, and I’ll give you $N to do it,” you’d be suspicious and probably say no–unless you wanted your mail server to end up on email blacklists. In the same way, if someone comes to you and says “I’ll give you $N to rent subdomains, subdirectories, or pages from you. Just link to my doorway pages from your content,” I would recommend to say no as well. It can affect the reputation of your domain if you host doorway pages for someone else and then that other person creates spam on the pages on your domain.

    About a year and a half ago, Webmaster Tools started sending out notices about doorway pages.

    Image: Batman Returns (Warner Bros.)

  • Matt Cutts: Excessive Blog Updates To Twitter Not Doorways, But Possibly Annoying

    Google’s head of webspam took on an interesting question from a user in a new Webmaster Help video:

    Some websites use their Twitter account as an RSS like service for every article they post. Is that ok or would it be considered a doorway?

    I know he shoots these videos in advance, but the timing of the video’s release is interesting, considering that it’s asking about doorways. Google’s Penguin Update was unleashed on the web last week, seeking out violators of Google’s quality guidelines, and dealing with them algorithmically. One of Google’s guidelines is:

    Avoid “doorway” pages created just for search engines, or other “cookie cutter” approaches such as affiliate programs with little or no original content.

    There is no shortage of questions from webmasters wondering what exactly Google is going after with the update, which will likely come with future iterations, not unlike the Panda update. For more on some things to avoid, browse our Penguin coverage.

    Using your Twitter feed like an RSS feed, however, should not put you in harm’s way.

    “Well, I wouldn’t consider it a doorway because a doorway is typically when you make a whole bunch of different pages, each page is targeting one specific phrase,” he says. “And then when you land there, usually it’s like, click here to enter And then it takes you somewhere, and monetizes you, or something along those lines. So I wouldn’t consider it a doorway.”

    Cutts does suggest that such a practice can be annoying to users, however.

    “Could it be annoying?” he continues. “Yes, it could be annoying, especially if you’re writing articles like every three minutes or if those articles are auto-generated somehow. But for example, in FeedBurner, I use a particular service where, when I do a post on my blog, it will automatically tweet to my a Twitter stream, and it will say New Blog Post, colon, and whatever the title of the blog post is. And that’s perfectly fine.”

    “That’s a good way to alert your users that something’s going on,” he adds. “So there’s nothing wrong with saying, when you do a blog post, automatically do a tweet. It might be really annoying if you have so many blog posts, that you get so many tweets, that people start to ignore you or unfollow you. But it wouldn’t be considered a doorway.”

    OK, so you’re safe from having to worry about that being considered a doorway in Google’s eyes.

    I’m not sure I entirely agree with Cutts’ point about it being annoying, however. Yes, I suppose it can be annoying. That really depends on the user, and how they use Twitter. I’m guessing that it is, in fact, annoying to Cutts.

    Just as some sites treat their Twitter feed like an RSS feed, however, there are plenty of Twitter users who use it as such. A lot of people don’t use RSS, and would simply prefer to get their news via Twitter feed. Some users in this category (I consider myself among them) follow sites on Twitter because they want to follow the content they’re putting out. It’s really about user preference. Not everybody uses Twitter the same way, so you have to determine how you want to approach it.

    Cutts is definitely right in that some may unfollow you, but there could be just as many who will follow you because they want the latest.

    Either way, it doesn’t appear to be an issue as far as Google rankings are concerned.