Microsoft using doorway pages Options

[Webby]

Thanks to webproworld.com, a pretty astonishing discovery was made.

Microsoft have a whole bunch of imo low quality doorway pages that redirect and have stuffed keywords randomly into unrelated paragraphs. Either a. they have Googles permission or b. They are extracting the urine (taking the p***).

Their pages break at least 2 of googles guidelines (doorway pages with redirects, stuffed keywords ...).

Do a search for "Broadcast automation India", "Hosting management Australia" or "Education software Asia". Right at the top (at least from my german ip) You will find pages such as www.microsoft.com/asia/solutionMarketPlace/portal/broadcast-automation-india.htm

Check out that page with javascript turned off :shock:

At the top of each page they have as graphic text (to help with keyword density no doubt) the following...

"This site has been designed to help our visitors finding directly the information, product or service they searching in our websites"

That translates into english to... "This page is a doorway page specifically designed for search engines"

Note btw. they have got their H1 tag in by redefining it. Nothing spammy about that but a clear indication the page is designed for SEs.

This is followed by around 1000 words that Microsoft are calling "semantic content" *g*
Like the following...

"...Websites can have multiple broadcast automation india navigation bars.." huh??

and beautys like

"...and enhances website functionality broadcast automation india and the corporate brand" 2x huh??!

Your classic piece of dwp spam where keywords are placed into unrelated paragraphs. Cute however to call it 'semantic content' :-)

And dont think its just for a handful of pages. There are no less than 575 of them.

Do you think if we all fill out a spam report Google will ban Microsoft?? lol

If I was at Google however I'd be pretty miffed and have a word in their ear insisting they remove the pages asap. As if they are allowed to remain in the index, it puts Google in a VERY difficult position. If they do not act against such a high profile site, then they have absolutely no basis to act against the likes of your average online company or individual who also have to put bread on the tables. What's good for the goose has to be good for the gander.
Either they change their guidelines or they take action, they cant have it both ways. It wouldnt be so bad if the DWPs were done well, these however are pretty crass and unattractive imo.

Does this mean that the new MSN search engine will gladly accept such DWP pages I wonder?
It will be interesting to see how Google reacts to this.
If it IS ok by Google then its the green light for all DWPs with redirects folks (reader: yeah, right).

Alan

[Note to mods: I understand if you remove this as it is a pretty sensitive issue which will not please a heap big corporation]

[bragadocchio]

I understand if you remove this as it is a pretty sensitive issue which will not please a heap big corporation

Thanks for your post, Webby.

I think it does matter that this is a very big corporation, and that they are actively engaging in a activity which clearly goes against the guidelines of Google.

We normally remove the URLs and name of a company that someone reports here as violating one of the guidelines of Google. We are willing to discuss the practices, and one of the very legitimate risks of engaging in activities that are clearly against the guidelines of Google is that people will report it as spam. Maybe in this particular instance, and only in this instance, we need to break our own rule.

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.

[Ruud]

Not long ago we extensively discussed cloaking, especially how it relates to SEO and consequences. I stated then that it was confusing, to me, that we all learn how bad it is while I had hard information that top companies we can all name employ the technique.

That thread taught me a lot about ethics in SEO - and especially that the notion I "grew up" with that there is black hat/white hat SEO is simply wrong:

There are no hats. 

There are three forms of SEO tactics: 
1. Techniques currently rated as 'safe'. 
2. Techniques rated as risky. 
3. Risk balanced and risk managed techniques.

Especially propjectphp brought up strong points in favor or SEO ethics - so much so it had to be split off in a seperate thread.

Worth reading.

It must be very challenging for SE technicians to stay ahead of the game, or in the case of cloaking to even get in the game. Although some older techniques have been dealt with, cloaking in general is not as easy to spot for SE's on an automated basis. A whole industry exists around effectively hiding the cloaking (that's cloaking the cloaking then, I guess....).

Personally I'm not comfortable with the potential risk, even though that risk is limited.

I agree with Bill; as a general rule we don't allow naming specific companies or web sites to prevent allegations flying back and forth - in this case nothing is alleged however and I think none of us can claim we're talking down a competitor here. When in doubt whether you can name a company or web site, always message a moderator first.

Thanks for the post, Webby!!

Ruud

[Mike521]

very good points webby.

does google ban the site that goes against it's rules, regardless of who it is? knowing that banning microsoft will do nothing but hurt the validity of the search results. if you can't even find microsoft on a search engine, what good is it?

on the other hand if you don't ban microsoft, how do you justify banning any other site that does the same thing?

and certainly google can request that ms make changes, but ms doesn't have to do anything for google, whether google likes it or not..

wonder if microsoft considered this and just decided that "hey we've got 'em by the....."

it does hurt ms to not be listed in google though, and obviously they know that top ranking for these terms will bring them money. so if they get banned, they get no rankings and no money. so google does have some ammo

[Ruud]

Even when reported Google doesn't seem to always ban cloaked sites. They seem to take a look at what is being cloaked with what. They have a partnership relation with NPR and happily keep listing their text transcript of audio content - something which can be put in the camp of cloaking.

An interesting read is Danny Sullivan's Ending The Debate Over Cloaking.

For Google I think the problem is that banning, or setting PR for the whole site to zero, of "John & Jane Doe Ltd." is a whole lot easier than applying the same to Microsoft, Apple, Real, or any other large company. The amount of "Google is broken!" posts would shoot through the roof if Microsoft simply wasn't in the index anymore or would come out pretty low because of PR0. Alternative would be to fiddle with the placement (has been done before) but at what scale would you be doing this? MS' sites are quite large....

Ruud

[Webby]

This imo is not however cloaking (some have different defintions of it though). It is imo substandard doorway pages with your run of the mill javascript redirect. They have used the nocache tag which initally led me to believe it was a cloaked DWP, it doesnt seem to be the case, although I cant know for sure.
I personally dont give a damn who uses dwps that redirect or stuff keywords etc. What riles me is the whole double standard and hypocrisy issues. Such a high profile site spamming is bound to be caught out publicly in the forums (as it has) and might well make major publications as well (it will if I have my way concerning the German press). It is giving all those DWP software merchants and seos that produce such pages some great ammo.
"Microsoft as one of Googles competitors are even getting away with using dwps with redirection and keyword stuffing.. for only $xxx YOU TOO can have zig thousand doorway pages. You can see they work....."
This really does put Google in a hell of a difficult position. Such a public display of poor doorway page toleration can not be good for them surely.

MSN clearly have no need for dwp pages to rank top. With an attractive page and little on page optimization, theyd be top purely due to their authority status. I just wish Google would stop sitting on the fence and either boot these pages (obviously not the whole domain) or change their guidelines accordingly. You can not have it both ways imo. Google must be aware of them (or are now). I'd be very interested to see if these pages are still here in a few weeks. If they still exist I will be pushing google to explain why they are tolerating these pages and not others.

Alan

[Mike521]

why should google just remove the doorway pages from the index? If I put 575 dwp's on my site, I bet the whole domain would be banned. granted it'd also be a much higher % of the site that was spam, but still.

does google cut slack with smaller sites, and just drop the doorway pages, and give no PR penalty? if so then I'd say it's fair to do the same for ms. but if google sees this on smaller sites and insta-bans them, they should stick to their guns and do the same with ms.

ms shouldn't get any special treatment, so I'm interested in seeing how google deals with this.

[Ruud]

With an attractive page and little on page optimization, theyd be top purely due to their authority status.

That is puzzling, isn't it? You would expect, and up to some point understand it from a small competitor.

To preserve the accuracy and quality of our search results, Google may permanently ban from our index any sites or site authors that engage in cloaking to distort their search rankings.

(from: Google Information for Webmasters)

In the WhenU case they did but is is speculated that had more to do with WhenU using other people's, copyrighted, content.

boot these pages (obviously not the whole domain)

You mentioned possibly 575 pages.... For a term we are aware of. There might be others. If those pages are dropped you have to prevent them from appearing in the index again - and with no guarantee they don't show up tomorrow on the next page.

I hear what you're saying though. Over time the impression I've been left with is that this type of thing is a "don't ask, don't tell" situation.

Ruud

[Webby]

With all the phds they have, youd think they'd find a way of detecting this crap by now wouldnt you. It's their search engine however.
I do know I'd make a few high profile examples of those who engage in this kind of spam. WhenU was one, I somehow dont think M$ will be another, but they should be if you are not going to have rule for them and one rule for the rest of us kind of stance.

The real world is however that Google can do what it likes when it likes to whom it likes. They just better never ever preach to anyone about spamming their engine again at SES or elsewhere for that matter as I'll be there to put them on the spot with this issue. I hate double standards and hypocracy. Either change the guidelines or take action on those you are aware of.

Alan

[Mike521]

I agree 100%. but lets face it, our (search engine marketers') happiness with google has very little to do with their future success. they can ban our smaller sites for doing what ms does, and continue allowing ms to do it, and let us all rant about it, and they'll still be fine.

they just need to be satisfied that they are providing relevant results to the people who don't know nor care what the hell redirects are, and that's the vast majority of the internet world.

all those people want to find ms, so google may make an exception there. all those people do not necessarily, however, want to find jon doe's site selling blue paint that decided to use 100 doorway pages ..

so I could see them making an exception and justifying it to themselves, and not liking the fact that we'll all be p***ed, but that's tough for us..

it'd be neat if they dropped ms though, I'd like to see that

[mugshot]

Actually, if Google dropped all the smaller to medium sites for using DWPs, they'd be out of business. Why? Think about it...it is those small to medium sized businesses that run adwords out the wazoo. Microsoft does not need to spend money on adwords, they are already there.

The problem is like Webby mentioned, double standards. And that needs to stop if we want ethical search engine practices. Google may find itself in danger if they dropped M$ but that is the price they have to pay in order to uphold their reputation.

Once a rule is made, there cannot be exception, well unless somehow somewhere, M$ has investment in Google search technology and they made an agreement. Who knows what goes on behind closed doors. I mentioned sometime ago that there could always be a conspiracy behind search engine companies and that Google could manipulate results IF they wanted to. They created the damn SERPs anyways.

So, to bring up the issue again, if M$ paid Google $5,000,000 a year to turn their eyes to all 500+ DWPs, why on earth would Google say no? And that is possible knowing how M$ works!!!

[Mike521]

hmm I'm not so sure about that. I agree with what you are saying, but only if all those small / medium sites banded together and all started using DWP's, and all got dropped from the index together. then google may have less relevant results to show to searchers, because a selection of the sites that were dropped were relevant regardless of the fact that they were using dwp's.

but most of those sites aren't using dwp's, and aren't banding together to all decide to do it. they can't risk being dropped out because there'd be more than enough happy competitors who willingly won't use dwp's, who will take their place.

my point is that you could drop 100 sites from google's index that are selling printers, and google would still have enough relevant sites to show to users who searched for printers. they'd never know that 100 sites were dropped, nor would they care. only if an extremely large % of printer sites were dropped, would the google results start to dissatisfy the searchers and make them go to yahoo.

but all you need to do is drop one major site, microsoft, and your engine's results are called into question. putting myself into the shoes of an average searcher, if I couldn't find microsoft on a search engine, I'd think the engine was worthless. how do you miss one of the biggest sites on the net?

I just think it would take a very long time for people to notice the missing small / medium businesses, but they'd notice microsoft right away

[kensplace]

Google could drop microsoft, and people would still find MS products and services due to the number of people that sell MS products, have MS related sites etc.

Google should treat MS the same way it would treat me, or you. If not, it's like saying, hey all you big multinational corporations, come and do as you will, you wont get wrong.....

[Advisor]

I would imagine that Google will treat these doorway pages the same way they treat all doorway pages. They will look for an automated way of removing them from the listings (assuming they believe they're spam).

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? Doorway pages...lol...if it wasn't so sad it would be funny!

[Ruud]

And the "funny" ( = sad) thing is that if the thing becomes officially outed it will take only a couple of days before a statement is released that MS had no clue, simply no idea at all; that it is all the fault of this tiny SEO company they hired "back in the days".

Ruud

[Webby]

I'm actually thinking no one in Microsoft headquarters in Redmond knows about these pages.
It appears to be originating from the Microsoft Asia office. I wont name names, here but if you look at the bottom of the doorway page you will see a copyright notice that appears to belong to an SEO company that begins with 'T'. My theory is MS Asia have hired this company to do their optimization for this portal without the consultation of head office. I simply cant imagine that Microsoft would sanction such pages on their own domain. Can you imagine the PR heads face when told Microsoft are spamming search engines whilst about to launch their own??

How can they EVER talk about how they want to keep their search engines clean of spam, and yes, imo these DWP pages are clearly spam (pretty crass at that) with stuffed keywordsm, redirects and poor quality.I very much believe this is a rogue Microsoft office in Asia somewhere that has been foolish enough to hire an SEO who uses such dodgy methods. You'd think however such a big company with have all kinds of checks and balances regarding what goes on their website.

Google has harped on about how they want to deal with this kind of spam automatically by tweaking their algo for literally years. It cant be that difficult, they have enough phds there to sort out the spam if they really wanted to. The big problem for Google is this is a very high profile website that is flaunting its guidelines and they must know it will eventually become public knowledge. Do they ignore it and come out with "We only remove pages automatically and will be looking at incorporating an algorithm change to pick up... bla bla" or do they make an example and kick out the spammy pages. I think I know what I'd do Sergey!

If they don't take action (and I mean manual action), what message are they sending to all those webmasters who want to buy one of the umpteen doorway page generators that hammer out 30000 poor quality pages?
It is absolutely mind boggling that Microsoft have such pages on their site. I seriously doubt anyone in MS Redmond has santioned these pages. I bet someones head will be rolling soon. Especially if this breaks into some of the major press publications.

[I, Brian]

This is a very eye-opening thread - it will be very very interesting indeed to see how the issue is dealt with.

[Hieroweb]

Maybe Bill cut them a check to look the other way....wouldn't that be something...hehehe

[sanity]

I have to say I think it's hilarious that Microsoft have used such amateur optimisation techniques. Anyone with half a brain could have executed a black/white/grey hat campaign with more finesse.

[algoholic]

Do you guys think Bill Gates approves every addition or change under microsoft.com? I'm sure hundreds of people own their own little pieces, some in other countries. One or a couple of those people probably heard about some nifty SEO trick, got a little budget out of the mad money jar, and contracted with the firm to setup some doorway pages to try to boost SERP. When MS finds out about this I think we'll see the doorway pages perhaps turned off, but I don't think we'll see the sponsor of these pages swinging from a rope in the Hague.