Sphinn - Google New Definition for Doorway Pages

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Sphinn It!

Went Hot: June 3, 2008 - 6:42 am
Posted By: beussery 399 days ago
Topic Type: News Story (Jump to http://www.beussery.com)
Category: Google SEO

If you missed it doorway pages aren't what they used to be and I've got the details...

9 Comments

Who Desphunn This (0)

Comments

from onreact 397 days ago #

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This is a completely new definition.

from mvandemar 397 days ago #

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I think we all knew what a doorway page was before, though. In my opinion the new wording more accurately describes what they were refering to in the first place, and isn't actually a change of concept. I, at least, always assumed that doorway pages were landing page funnels, rather than individual pages that were of value. I never thought that the reference to sitemaps belonged in there in the first place, to be honest.

from DazzlinDonna 397 days ago #

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I agree. My definition of doorway pages was always the one they have now - I've never thought of them as having lots of links on them. Weird.

from DanThies 397 days ago #

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That old definition is a bit odd. This is better, although it's still disappointing to see 'doorway' = spam.

from mvandemar 397 days ago #

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@Dan - well... they do specifically state "low quality" as part of the definition. To me it doesn't look like they are using a blanket definition to mean all optimized landing pages. Of course, that doesn't mean that every "Remote Quality Rater" that Google uses is going to be able to tell the difference, but their entire role is centered around evaluating the landing page, not the site.

I just checked, and nowhere in the entire "Remote Quality Rater" document does it mention the phrase "doorway", or even just "door" for that matter.

from AndrewMiller 397 days ago #

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I am glad to see this definition changed as it now encompasses more of my competitors in the highly competitive retail automotive category (U.S. only). This should help my cause for many thousands of long-tail keywords that we have actual "useful" content for, in contrast to competitors that rank fo rmany of the terms just because of their heavily linked thin pages. The key here is "useful" content, which will always win in the long run, as this new definition proves (again).

from Taco 397 days ago #

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Every good SEO will have its doorway or landing pages contain useful content. This increases convertion rates en will generate more incomming links. How is Google going to decide the quality of the pages?

from claye 397 days ago #

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I agree - much better and more precise than the former definition. It's reassuring so see that user-optimized landing pages don't fall under the spam blanket - doorway pages only equal spam most of the time.

from Ammon 396 days ago #

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The old definition Google used actually applied to hallway pages (see this Google search for hallway pages for articles explaining them).

I'm sure most of you were not in the game back then, but hallway pages were used to provide links to doorway pages back when doorways were multiple, and a sort of external feature to most sites, built on a per-engine and per-key-phrase basis with largely duplicate content.

Google engineers were on the outside looking in, and simply got their terminologies confused first time around. This time they managed to define the right term. :o)