Google Doorway Pages Algorithm & Guidelines Updated

Google announced they have updated their ranking algorithm to detect a larger and better set of doorway pages and thus wipe them out of the search results, as to improve search quality within Google's search results.

Brian White from Google's search quality team said:

Over time, we've seen sites try to maximize their "search footprint" without adding clear, unique value. These doorway campaigns manifest themselves as pages on a site, as a number of domains, or a combination thereof. To improve the quality of search results for our users, we'll soon launch a ranking adjustment to better address these types of pages. Sites with large and well-established doorway campaigns might see a broad impact from this change.

Truth is, I have not heard many complaints about doorway pages ranking well in Google. But I guess they were for Google to improve their algorithm for that.

With that, Google quietly updated their doorway pages guidelines page. Now it read:

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

The previous day it read:

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.

Therefore, Google frowns on practices that are designed to manipulate search engines and deceive users by directing them to sites other than the one 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 practices, including removing these sites from Google’s index. 

Some examples of doorways include: 

Having multiple domain names targeted at specific regions or cities that funnel users to one page

Templated pages made solely for affiliate linking

Multiple pages on your site with similar content designed to rank for specific queries like city or state names

It seems Google's definition has shrunk a bit around this.

So how do you know if your pages are at risk? Google said ask yourself these questions:

• 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?

As of now, I have yet to see mass scale complaints about sites that have doorway pages no longer ranking too well. This includes my monitoring of more "black hat" forums and social discussions. I'll keep an eye out.

Google Fact Rank: Google Ranking Web Pages On Facts, Not Links

The SEO community is buzzing heavily around a paper (PDF) published by Google named Knowledge-Based Trust: Estimating the Trustworthiness of Web Sources.

The paper describes how Google can rank the most factually accurate web pages higher in the search results. Here is the abstract:

The quality of web sources has been traditionally evaluated using exogenous signals such as the hyperlink structure of the graph. We propose a new approach that relies on endogenous signals, namely, the correctness of factual information provided by the source. A source that has few false facts is considered to be trustworthy. The facts are automatically extracted from each source by information extraction methods commonly used to construct knowledge bases. We propose a way to distinguish errors made in the extraction process from factual errors in the web source per se, by using joint inference in a novel multi-layer probabilistic model. We call the trustworthiness score we computed Knowledge-Based Trust (KBT). On synthetic data, we show that our method can reliably compute the true trustworthiness levels of the sources. We then apply it to a database of 2.8B facts extracted from the web, and thereby estimate the trustworthiness of 119M webpages. Manual evaluation of a subset of the results confirms the effectiveness of the method.

So instead of using links to determine the best possible web page to rank for a query, Google may want to rank the page with the fewest false facts the highest. Google calls this Knowledge-Based Trust (KBT).

Of course, no one would currently say that this is how Google's algorithm works. Google's Matt Cutts said in the past, just because Google has a patent, it doesn't mean the algorithm works that way.

But with links getting sucked dry and with Google's emphasis on the knowledge graph and knowledge vault, I wouldn't be surprised if we see Google lean more to factual information.

Which makes me wonder, who determines what the facts are around SEO and what content should rank highest there. :)

EGOL in Cre8asite forums said:

They are assuming that their Knowledge Graph is correct. I don't like that because it is exactly how misconceptions are perpetuated. New discoveries and improvements will have a difficult time entering the knowledge base.

rish3 echoed it in WebmasterWorld:

If Google can't reliably identify trustworthy links, why would we think they can reliably identify trustworthy content in some other way?

Then what if SEOs come up with a way to make up facts and spam Google's fact knowledge engine to trick them into facts that are actually false?

Good times we live in.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld & Cre8asite.

Google Webmaster Tools May Add Unverified Sites List Filter

Many SEOs have tons and tons of sites in their Google Webmaster Tools accounts, either from new existing clients, old past clients or long term clients or just friends you are helping out.

But sometimes those sites get unverified and you don't have the tools you need. Filtering to see which sites are unverified in Google Webmaster Tools is not as easy as many would like. Google said that they are working on a way to improve that.

Google's John Mueller said in a Google+ hangout Friday morning "that is something we've been kind of looking into to kind of make that a little bit easier."

He said this as the 40:38 mark in the video:

Question: I have multiple sites that need reverifying. Is there a way to display just the unverified sites? 

Answer: No, unfortunately, not at the moment. 

That is something we've been kind of looking into to kind of make that a little bit easier. I have the same problem, as well. I have the same problem as well. I have a ton of sites that I used to kind of check on, and a lot of them get unverified because I do something stupid on the hosting. 

What I usually just do is use the control F and look for the right words and kind of handle it like that. So no, no really easy answer there.

Here is the video:

Forum discussion at Google+.

Google: Definitely Put A Nofollow On Web Design By Links

An old topic of web design by or site credit links - should you put them on web sites and if so, should they pass link juice?

So if I design a web site for you, can I put "site designed by Barry" and link that to my site? Trust me, you see this on probably 25% of the sites designed out there by smaller agencies.

Google's John Mueller said you can put the link but "definitely put a nofollow rule for those links." That is even if the site owner wants the link there, you should still nofollow it.

Here is the transcript of the video where it starts at 19:47:

Question:

I work at a web design agency and we place a “designed by link” in the footer of all the web sites we create. Is this a good practice or should we stop?

Answer:

I guess this kind of looks at things like with regards to unnatural links, for example. 

And from our point of view, these kind of links, by default, are things where the webmaster doesn't really place the link explicitly on their own. 

So this is something where I'd recommend, if you want to put your footer link there, make sure it has a nofollow link there, so that this is something that people could click on if they're interested, but it's seen as something that is not an editorial link by the webmaster. It's not something that you'd have to worry about later on and say, "oh, my god. I put all these links on this website. Now Google will think I'm building an unnatural link pyramid or something crazy." 

So this is something where putting a nofollow there is definitely good practice. You don't need to kind of not put these links there if you think that it makes sense. If that's something that you've kind of decided on together with the people who are running this website in the end, then that's something, certainly that you might want to do, but I definitely put a nofollow rule for those links.

Here is the video:

Jennifer Slegg first covered this and now there is some discussion at WebmasterWorld on the topic.

Personally, my company stopped doing this practice well before Google had the nofollow because I figured most larger agencies didn't put this on sites they created. It looked a bit cheap.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld & Google+.