Doorway pages are specially created web pages designed to appeal
to search engines but not necessarily to users. Keyword-laden pages
boost the website search engine rankings, but are bypassed when
clicked on by users looking at search results, linking directly to
much more attractive, but less search-friendly web pages.
Google does not like these practices and recommends that they
are not used. “Make pages for users, not for search engines," says
Google. "Don't deceive your users or present different content to
search engines than you display to users”.
Use of such illicit practices, warns the search engine’s
webmaster guidelines, “may lead to a site being removed entirely
from the Google index. Once a site has been removed, it will no
longer show up in results on Google.com or on any of Google's
partner sites.”
BMW’s German website, BMW.de has suffered this fate, albeit
BMW.com is still listed.
Google investigators found many doorway pages on its German
website. According to a blog from Matt Cutts, a Google software
engineer with the quality and webspam team, the website violated
the webmaster quality guidelines.
While it has now removed some of the offending pages, BMW.de
will have to submit a "re-inclusion request" before the team will
make the necessary changes to reinstate the site. This request,
said Cutts, should include details as to who had created the
doorway pages. The firm would probably also have to reassure Google
that there would be no repetition of the offence.
Cutts added that another German website, belonging to IT firm
Ricoh, is to be removed from the Google index shortly for similar
reasons.
Speaking to the BBC News website, BMW spokesman Markus Sagemann
admitted that the firm had used doorway pages, but explained that
the content was the same in the search results as appeared on the
website.
"However, if Google says all doorway pages are illegal we have
to take this into consideration," he added.
