Thanks for the comment Laura!

I was aware of the fact duplicate content wasn't the issue, but it just baffled me that this very obvious black-hat tactic wasn't punished by Google in any way. Even though their guidelines clearly stated doorway pages are a big "no-no".

Let's hope the December 2017 update has a noticeable impact

Have a nice day!

Hi Laura,

It seems like this age-old black-hat tactic still works though. Maybe only outside of the US? Check out this SERP: https://www.google.be/search?q=site:trafficonline.be+inurl:seo-&ei=Z0RnWqHED47UwQLs5bkQ&start=0&sa=N&filter=0&biw=1920&bih=960&num=100

You don't have to understand the language to see that this is almost the same identical page, purely setup to rank well for localized terms (city names). Each page has the same exact content but uses some variables as to not have the exact same text: nearby city names, a Google Map embed, and even some variables for the amount of people living in a city (as if that's relevant information for the user). The content itself is really thin and the same for all cities.

The crazy thing is this site ranks well for some city names in combination with their keywords, even though it's very clearly using black-hat SEO tactics (doorway pages) to manipulate rankings for localized search terms. I would think websites that so blatantly violate the Google Guidelines would be completely removed from the search index, but that definitely isn't the case here.

Any thoughts as to why sites like this aren't removed for violating Google's terms and conditions? Or how I could keep telling our clients they can't use black hat tactics because Google might remove them from the index, even though it appears the chance of such a removal is almost non-existent?

Thanks in advance,
Kind regards