Microsoft Employing Spam Techniques?

The SEO forums are afire with allegations of Microsoft employing spam techniques to boost their rankings.

The redirected doorway page was initially brought up in a Search Engine Watch thread on cloaking.

To check it out yourself, turn the Javascript off on your browser and search for "broadcast automation india" on Google and click on the first result, which is Microsoft redirected doorway page.

Since Microsoft should be taking these down in the next few days, here is what the doorway page looks like:

And here is the index of their entire network of doorway pages for good measure:

What is more disturbing is how well these "novice" doorway pages are ranking in Google.

Note that MSN Search, Yahoo and Ask are not ranking these pages in the same way.

Although I wouldn’t put it beyond Microsoft to spam for pure traffic reasons, this little adventure into old school doorway pages might be a way to look for holes in their competition’s search engine algorithms. After all, to beat search engine spam, you need to know how it works, right? Plus, this makes Google look as bad as Microsoft for being unable to detect and ban simple doorway pages from an online "authority". Just a thought…

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