Source: http://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-to-devalue-doorway-pages-in-search-results/128419/
Doorway pages are pages that exist simply for the purpose of dominating the first search results page. The gist of the content is the same, paragraphs are reworded on each doorway page, but all doorway pages lead to the same sales page on one site. This leads to more traffic to that sales page, but creates a poor user experience, which is not in accordance with Google’s quality guidelines.
Ditch the doorway pages
Here are some helpful questions to evaluate whether your site has doorway pages:
- Is your content created for the search engines and to drive traffic into your site, or are they vital to your site’s user experience?
- Is the page optimized for generic terms even if the content of the page deals with a specific subject matter?
- Do your pages contain the same information found on a different page on the same website, so that you can get more organic traffic?
- Do these pages exist only to draw in affiliate traffic and send users along without adding any value in terms of having unique content or functionality?
- Are these pages linked to from other parts of your site (eg. the navigation menu, sidebar, other internal pages) or are they purposely hidden (with backlinks from a network of sites) on the site so that they appear only on search engines?