0498 70 98 60Doorway Pages: What Google Considers Spam and How to Build Location Pages That Rank
Businesses that serve several cities face a real temptation: create one page per town, swap the city name, and hope each one ranks. Google calls the result doorway pages (officially, “doorway abuse”), and the practice is listed in its spam policies. The good news is that location and service pages are perfectly legitimate when they’re built for people. Here’s where Google draws the line and how to stay on the right side of it.
What Google Means by Doorway Pages
Google’s spam policies define doorway abuse as sites or pages created to rank for specific, similar search queries that lead users to intermediate pages that aren’t as useful as the final destination. Its examples include:
- Multiple websites with slight variations in URL and homepage, built to capture a single query
- Multiple domains or pages targeted at specific regions or cities that funnel users to one page
- Pages generated only to send visitors into the useful or relevant part of the site
- Substantially similar pages that are closer to search results than to a clearly defined, browsable hierarchy
A classic example, which a Google forum expert once described and Google staff endorsed: a site with 200 pages carrying the same text, with only the place name changed (“Find a taxi in Denver,” “Find a taxi in Phoenix”), all designed to catch local searches and push traffic to one booking page.
What Happens If Google Sees Doorway Pages
Sites that violate spam policies may rank lower or disappear from results entirely. Google detects violations with automated systems and, when needed, human reviewers, which can lead to a manual action in Search Console. Since 2024, Google’s spam policies also cover scaled content abuse: producing many pages, by hand or with AI, mainly to manipulate rankings. Mass-produced city pages often fall into both buckets.
If you’ve been hit, our guide to Google penalty recovery explains how to diagnose and fix it.
Doorway Page or Legitimate Location Page?
The difference isn’t the number of pages. It’s whether each page gives a visitor something they couldn’t get from the others.
| Doorway page | Legitimate location or service page |
|---|---|
| Same text with the city name swapped | Content written for that location and its customers |
| No real presence or service in the area | You actually serve the area, with real staff, hours, or service radius |
| Exists only to catch a search and redirect or funnel | Answers the visitor’s questions on the page itself |
| Isolated, hard to reach from the navigation | Part of a clear site structure (Locations or Service Areas) |
| Dozens of near-identical pages | A reasonable number of distinct pages |
How to Build Location Pages That Rank
If You Have Physical Locations
Create one page per real location, with its own address, phone number, hours, directions, photos of that office or store, team members, and reviews from local customers. Link each page to its own Google Business Profile, and add LocalBusiness schema markup with matching details.
If You’re a Service-Area Business
Plumbers, roofers, cleaners, and other service-area businesses often cover dozens of towns. You don’t need a page for each one. Start with a strong service-area page listing where you work, then create dedicated pages only where you can add real local substance:
- Projects completed in that city, with photos and short case studies
- Local specifics: permits, climate issues, building types, typical problems
- Testimonials from customers in that area
- Response times or pricing factors specific to the area (without promising what you can’t guarantee)
- Answers to questions local customers actually ask
If you can’t write 300 useful words about a town that wouldn’t fit any other town, that page probably shouldn’t exist yet.
Keep the Structure Clean
- Group location pages under a clear parent (
/locations/or/service-areas/) and link to them from your main navigation or footer. - Avoid separate microsites or domains for each city. Google’s old advice still holds: one strong site generally beats several sites competing with each other, and a 301 redirect can consolidate duplicates.
- Don’t create pages for cities you don’t serve.
For the local ranking factors that matter most, read our local SEO guide for small businesses.
Quick Audit: Do You Have Doorway Pages?
- List every location or keyword-variant page on your site.
- Compare them side by side: if more than a few sentences are interchangeable, rewrite or consolidate.
- Check Search Console: pages with impressions but almost no clicks, or pages Google reports as “Duplicate, Google chose different canonical,” are red flags.
- Merge weak pages into a stronger parent page and redirect them with 301s.
- Rebuild the pages you keep around real local proof.
Frequently Asked Questions
Are City Pages Bad for SEO?
No. City and location pages are fine when each one offers unique, useful information for people in that area. They become doorway pages when they’re near-duplicates created only to rank.
How Many Location Pages Should a Service-Area Business Have?
As many as you can make genuinely useful. Start with your most important markets and add pages only when you have local projects, reviews, or details to share.
Can AI Write My Location Pages?
AI can help draft, but pages produced at scale with little added value can fall under Google’s scaled content abuse policy. Every page needs real local information and human review.
Get Location Pages That Work
We build and audit location and service-area pages as part of our SEO services. Référenceur is a European agency (Belgium and Luxembourg) that works with U.S. businesses remotely, through video calls, shared screens, and monthly reporting. Request a free assessment to review your current pages.