Doorway page
A doorway page is a low-value page created mainly to rank for a query and funnel visitors somewhere else, rather than to serve them itself.
Updated 2 Sept 2026
In more detail
Doorway pages are usually generated in bulk from a template, with a city, service, product or keyword swapped in and little else that differs. They are a spam policy violation on Google whether they are produced deliberately by a site owner or planted by an attacker after a compromise. The defining trait is not that a page is templated but that it does not stand on its own: visitors arriving from search must click through to get any real answer.
Why Doorway page matters
Bulk near-duplicate pages dilute crawl budget, compete with the pages a site actually wants ranked, and put the whole domain at risk of a manual action for scaled content abuse. For a compromised site, mass-generated doorways are also the fastest way to accumulate thousands of indexed URLs that then have to be removed one by one.
How it works
A script iterates over a list — locations, industries, brand names — rendering one URL per row from a single layout. Internal links or an injected sitemap push crawlers into the set. Because the unique text per page is often a single substituted phrase, the pages are functionally identical to a search engine.
Examples
- Hundreds of '<service> in <city>' URLs whose only difference is the city name in the heading and title.
- Attacker-generated keyword pages under /wp-content/uploads/ that redirect to a single affiliate offer.
- Multiple near-identical landing pages targeting synonyms of one query, all pointing to the same contact form.
How it is detected or measured
Group your URLs by template and compare the unique text per page. If the differing content is essentially one substituted variable, or if a page's only call to action is to move the visitor elsewhere, treat it as a doorway and either consolidate it or exclude it from indexing.
Where this matters
- SEO Spam: The Complete Picture
The pillar page for injected search spam: the attack family, how the variants relate, and the detection and remediation path shared by all of them.
- How to Detect SEO Spam on Your Website
A repeatable detection routine: search-side checks first, then crawler-view comparison, then file and database review.
Sources
- Doorways — spam policies — Google Search Central
Definition of doorway pages and scaled content abuse.