Doorway pages never died — they just evolved.
Today they hide behind AI generators, “programmatic SEO”, GPT-templates and 1,000 automated city-pages that all say the same thing.
It feels new, but it’s the same trick with a nicer UI.

What Counts as a Doorway Page in 2025?

Anything built to capture a query rather than serve a user.

  • AI-scaled landing pages

  • Geo-pages with 97% identical text

  • Low-effort category pages

  • Thin content stitched together by prompts

  • Mass-produced “local intent” articles with no substance

If you wouldn’t bookmark it, link to it, or read it twice — it’s a doorway.

Google Already Knows the Pattern

SpamBrain is pattern-based.
It learns duplication, templates, repetitive layouts, and non-editorial content.
And the Site Reputation System punishes domains that publish too many “SEO-first” pages.

The result?
Sites rise fast… and fall faster.

AI Search Exposes Doorways Even More

LLMs don’t hallucinate quality where none exists.
Thin pages get ignored, skipped, or overwritten by synthesized answers.
If your page isn’t valuable, AI treats it as noise.

Why Doorways Will Crash Hard in 2026

Because Google’s updates are moving toward:

  • quality-weighted indexing

  • entity-driven ranking

  • trust-based demotion

  • anti-scaled-content classifiers

SEO shortcuts don’t scale anymore.
Real content does.

The Alternative?

Build fewer pages that matter.
Be helpful.
Be real.
Be worth the click.

That’s the new game.