The use of doorway pages and cloaked websites is a popular search engine “optimization” technique where users attempt to trick search engines by creating pages designed solely for the purpose of gaining top SERP placement. Search engines frown upon these techniques and will usually ban sites employing these types of “black-hat” SEO methods.
Is Microsoft Guilty of Search Engine Spam?
Should Microsoft be banned because of search engine spam? Discuss at WebProWorld.
Thanks to a thread started by bhartzer on WebProWorld, the SEO world has learned of an apparent attempt to spam the search engines conducted by none other than Microsoft. According to bhartzer’s post:
“someone at Microsoft has created these spammy doorway pages so that they rank well in Google the pages in question rank at the top of the search results for the particular terms that they’re targeting. When a human visits the page, the page loads a javascript file that redirects the visitor to another web page. Specifically, this search at Google should bring up the pages in question. When a search engine robot visits the page, the robot doesn’t execute the javascript code which includes the redirect – it just sees the optimized nonsense text, which results in a top search engine ranking.”
Essentially, Microsoft has created a number of what appears to be doorway pages that appear in SERPs when certain keywords are queried. Once one of the links are clicked, visitors are redirected, via a JavaScript command, to another Microsoft-created webpage that is stuffed full of potential keywords.
As news of MS potentially spamming search engines spread, reactions on many of the SEO forums was quick and in many cases, quite negative. Most were wondering if Microsoft’s site was going to be banned by search engines, or are they (search engines) only going to ban the doorway pages, etc.
A couple of posts, however, looked past the potential ban that Microsoft may or may not receive and noticed a potentially bigger problem. Bragadocchio, a site administrator for the Cre8asite forums said, “This isn’t so much about doorway pages and javascript redirects as it is about a company purposefully taking action that places its competitor in a very precarious position, and can have a serious impact upon the services that the competitor provides.” Which is a valid point that doesn’t yet have a valid explanation.
PhilC, a poster at WebProWorld, had this observation, “I looked at one of the doorway pages and it’s amazing that Microsoft have allowed it to happen – even in a regional Microsoft.” With this in mind, some questions need answering. Is Microsoft purposely making doorway pages for search engine ranking benefits? Or are they testing out their new search engine spider to see how it handles spam? Since these doorway pages are indeed from Microsoft’s site, albeit a regional version, it’s hard to believe that they would go through all of this trouble (potential banning, bad publicity among the SEO crowd) just to test-drive their spider; although, many disagree with the testing theory. WPW MVP ronniethedodger had these thoughts concerning the spider test:
“While you have an interesting thought there, I do not buy into the reasoning that they are using them for testing. Some of those terms are highly competitive and it is done with deliberate purpose.”
Ronnie’s thoughts seem to reflect the consensus. These doorway pages don’t appear to have been created to test search engines. They do, however, fit the description of spam. Because this seems to be the case, many wondered what the search engines, specifically Google, would do to Microsoft’s site? Will they ban the biggest software company ever? Or will they just remove the pages that violated the rules?
WebProWorld moderator flood6 had some interesting thoughts concerning Microsoft being removed from search engine indexes: “a search engine that doesn’t have Microsoft.com in their index is a second-rate search engine. They’re just too big.” flood suggested that Google and others could simply remove the offending pages and not ban Microsoft from their index.
Jill Whalen, posting at Cre8asite under the screen-name Advisor, also agreed with pulling the doorway pages from the index. However, she is concerned by Microsoft’s actions:
“I can’t imagine that Google would ever think for one minute that they should not do anything about these pages just because they’re Microsoft. It’s not like they have to dump all the normal MS pages, simply the doorway pages like they would for any site.
This isn’t a Google issue. The bigger issue (in my mind at least) is what the heck is MS thinking?”
Chris Richardson is a search engine writer and editor for Murdok. Visit Murdok for the latest search news.
