doorway pages

[marknc]

Can anyone explain to me exactly what doorway pages are, because those described in the BMW fiasco seem to be secret redirects.
Some years ago I had an SEO company optimise a site I was working on and they created and submitted around 40 "gateway" pages to various search engines.
In my cyber-youth this seemed like a really good idea; there was nothing covert about them, they were simply mini, one-page sites, each concentrating on one aspect of the main site and linking to it, no secrets, nothing hidden.
Would these be considered illegal by Google today?

[SPC2]

Nothing is "illegal", so forget that idea.

What your SEO did would most likely cause your site to be penalised if Google found the setup.

"Doorway pages" and "gateway pages" mean the same thing.

Traditionally, a doorway page is a page that is specifically created to rank highly in the search engines. They were usually of little or no use for people, and they linked or redirected to a real content page.

That's how most people still think of them, and it's also what most people still mean by the words "doorway page". That type of doorway page can attract a penalty from the engines if they auto-redirect, or if they are produced in large quantities, and are obviously created just for the engines.

But some people have redefined it to mean something a little different. Any page that people land on in a site can be thought of as a doorway into the site - a doorway page. But because of the history of doorway pages, it's better to think of those pages as "landing pages".

[marknc]

Thanks for your informative response. These were done some years ago but in view of today's plethora of websites and Google having to implement stricter strategies to eliminate spam it may be prudent for me to advise my client to take them down.
Thanks again.

[JKomp]

Doorways are used by people that take the phrase homepage too literally

[kgun]

Like this page.

It is a "doorway page" to the best doorway and SEO optimized sites on the net :-)

Related WPW post.