Dubious SEO gets BMW Germany banned from Google

Apparently, the BMW.de site was banned from Google (it has a pagerank of 0) after using doorway pages to increase keywords. Doorway pages are a technique where JavaScript enabled browsers see one page, usually with lots of pictures and often little content, while non-JS enabled browsers (which most search engines are) see a content-heavy and keyword laden page instead. Google Blogoscoped shows how they do it.

While this may not be a deliberate ploy on the part of BMW.de to get more pageviews it is still a tactic that is not allowed by the most popular search engine. Just like cloaking even very well-known brands can be removed from Google if they are caught using doorway pages or other methods disallowed by the Google Webmaster Guidelines.

German BMW Banned From Google