BMW.de Banned From Google For Using 'Doorway Pages'

Everton | Feb 05, 2006 | View Comments


Wow, Google really don't like their listings being 'abused'.  Google discovered that BMW Germany had been using 'Doorway Pages', pages which are stuffed full of keywords that the
site feels a need to be optimized for; however, as opposed to real
pages, this doorway is only displayed to the Googlebot. Human visitors
will be immediately redirected to another page upon visit.

When Google discovered this they reduced BMW.de's Page Rank down to 0, which means that no BMW.de pages will appear near the top of listings.

I wonder sometimes though, whether Google is playing fair in all this.  When is a SEO technique acceptable?  The aim of all SEO is to get higher rankings – I don't think that banning people because you don't like some SEO methods, but then allowing others to use other methods, is right.

Funnily enough I arranged a meeting at my company last week to go over
our search strategy and I recommend that we got a SEO specialist in to
optimise our sites.  I guess I need to make sure now that whoever we
engage doesn't adopt any frowned upon techniques.

More:  Google Blogoscoped


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About the Author: Everton is based in London and has worked in the internet and mobile space for over ten years now, and before that worked in corporate strategy and consulting. He has a degree in Economics from Cambridge University.He also writes for Windows 7 News, Windows 8 News and One Tip A Day.

  • Koz
    Are Ambergreen still doing this kind of thing? The links in Anonymus' post are broken, is this intentional? I approve of not allowing backlinks to spammy sites!
  • I would hope that the ban had been lifted by now given that I wrote this 9 months ago....;-). Google only banned them for about a month.
  • David
    Do a search in google, they are not banned at all.

    site:bmw.de
  • Everton Blair
    I've turned Javascript off - what exactly am I looking for?
  • Anonymous
    BMW aren't the only one's doing this kind of thing. Google should look at the client list of AmberGreen in the UK as they've been doing this for years. It's lazy, irresponsible and their clients should be in uproar. Take a look at the following homepages with JavaScript turned off and you'll see what I mean - www.boots.com, www.mytravel.com, www.thomascook.com, www.virgincosmetics.co.uk, www.thewhitecompany.com, www.bradford-bingley.co.uk, etc, etc. The list is endless. Google needs to continue to make examples of companies and SEO agencies such as Ambergreen if this is going to stop.
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