Member Avatar for PixelandtheWolf

Many of you probably have read about Google's announcement on Doorway pages. Whether or not this ranking signal has come into full swing yet is debatable, but regardless, I'd prefer to be pro-active if anything occurs.

For those of you who don't know what a Doorway page is, :

"Doorway pages are pages created that have little unique value but are usually made in an effort to increase your search presence and rank for specific terms. These can be landing pages on your own site, or on other domains. Usually they just serve to capture ranking for a keyword, but filter the user to a different page to convert."

With this being said (and for a said example) I have a website and within it's directory lies 50 different pages, each one a different state in the United States. (arkansas.html, alaska.html, arizona.html, etc.)

Each page lists approximately anywhere from 5 to 20 counties our company does business in and has a similar verbiage on each page to contact us if you want our services.

Will my site be hit by the doorway algorithm?

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raised a common setup — many near-identical state pages that differ mainly by place names. As suggested, that pattern is precisely the kind of site structure that tends to be treated as low-value by search engines; 's point about duplicate content is relevant too, but the core issue is user value, not just repeated wording.

A practical audit and decision flow:

  1. Inventory all state pages and flag which have genuine local signals (office/staff, local case studies, photos, licensing, county-specific rules).
  2. For each page ask: does it solve a local problem that the main site cannot? If not, consolidation into a single “Service Areas” hub with section anchors — or merging thin pages with 301s/canonicals — is the safer route.
  3. For pages kept live, add clearly unique, locally useful content (real testimonials tied to the area, job photos, staff bios, county-level FAQs, permit/pricing notes) and only use local structured data for pages representing real physical presence.

Regarding classifieds and directories (answering ): city/state pages can be legitimate when populated with authentic, user-generated listings, unique descriptions and active moderation. Automatically generated, templated location pages with minimal unique content are the risky pattern to avoid.

Technical and monitoring notes: prefer 301 redirects and canonicalization when consolidating; use meta noindex for pages that must remain but offer no unique value; avoid cloaking or thin redirects. Track indexation and query/impression changes in Search Console and analytics after changes. Treat this as a quality-cleanup: fewer, genuinely useful local pages will perform better than many templated ones.

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Member Avatar for rtrethewey

If these pages are nearly identical except for the state names, then yes, you are liable to be affected by the new doorway algorithm. A senior Google staffer speaking recently at a search engine marketing conference used this kind of page as an example of what the algorithm was designed to look for.

It would be a good idea to reconsider exactly why you created these pages in the first place. I suspect that somebody in your company thought there would be a ranking advantage to creating individual pages for each state which might be shown when someone searched on your target keywords and a state or city name. But, in fact, you'd be far better off creating a single page that included all of this information.

Edited by rtrethewey
Member Avatar for advent_geek

I also had the doubt about the issue, if @rtretheway were right. then how the classifieds and Directory websites will optimize their site according to the algorithm.

we were plan to expand our services for 2 more region, so we were plan to create 2 webpage which we plan to focus for different geo region. is it affect our website by door pages???

Kind Regards

Member Avatar for iamrichard

I would think it would be more of a violation of duplicate content rather than doorway pages if every page was similar except the geographical location. My take on duplicate content is that even if it is slightly similar you can be penalized.

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