Doorway pages and the line Google actually draws
Google’s spam policies name doorway pages directly: pages created to rank for specific searches that funnel people to the same destination without offering distinct value. Most location-page estates fail that test. Here is how not to.
What the policy says, in plain words
Google’s spam documentation describes doorway abuse as creating many pages aimed at slight variations of a search, where each page adds nothing distinct. Its 2024 scaled-content policy tightened the same idea: producing pages at scale, with automation or without, is abuse when the pages exist for search engines first and people second.
Note what the policy does not say. It does not say location pages are spam. It does not set a number of pages that is too many. The line is drawn through value, not volume.
The substitution test
Take any two of your location pages and swap their place names. If each still reads as true, the pages are substitutable, and substitutable is exactly what a doorway page is. A human reviewer sees it in seconds. The algorithms are trained on the same signature: identical structure, identical phrasing, a different town in the H1.
Signals that mark an estate as doorways
- Every page shares the same text with the place name swapped.
- No page contains anything that required knowing the place: no jobs, no travel times, no local constraints.
- Pages exist for areas the business does not meaningfully serve.
- Hundreds of pages appeared on the same day, none linked from anywhere except a sitemap.
Fixing an estate you already have
First, measure the problem instead of guessing. Compare each page against its most similar sibling, not against the average; the worst pair is what a reviewer would screenshot. Then improve or remove: pages for areas you genuinely serve get real local substance written into them. Pages for areas you cannot defend get consolidated into a parent page or deleted. While you work, keeping weak pages out of the index is honest damage control.
Where Townsmith fits
Townsmith was built around this exact line. Its quality score gives 45 of 100 points to how distinct a page is from its closest sibling, measured on visible text with the swapped tokens stripped first, so changing “Rye” to “Lewes” earns nothing. The publish gate holds pages back until they clear your threshold, and a Pro rule drops below-threshold pages from the sitemap with noindex until they recover. The plugin exists to make the defensible version of local pages the easy version.
Examples of doorway pages
The clearest examples share one trait: many near-identical pages built to catch searches, not to help the person who lands on them.
- A tradesperson with fifty town pages that read the same sentence with the town name swapped in, all funnelling to one contact form.
- City landing pages that rank for “[service] in [town]” but push every visitor to a single generic page.
- Pages aimed at slight keyword variations (“emergency plumber”, “24 hour plumber”, “plumber near me”) that all lead to the same undifferentiated content.
- Auto-generated area pages with no local detail beyond the name in the title and heading.
Doorway pages: common questions
What are doorway pages?
Doorway pages are low-value pages made mainly to rank for specific searches and funnel visitors to a single destination, rather than to serve the searcher. Google’s spam policies name them directly.
Are doorway pages against Google’s guidelines?
Yes. They fall under Google’s spam policies on doorways and scaled content abuse. Sites that rely on them risk manual actions and ranking demotions.
What is an example of a doorway page?
A set of near-identical “[service] in [town]” pages that differ only by the place name and send every visitor to the same generic page is the classic example.