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.
