So you have just taken over a new clients site, you have got all the details situated, and you know they have doorway pages infecting some area of the site. First step, is to get rid of those bad boys. Step 2 is to make sure the search engine knows there are no more pages in that location. So, what do you do to best remedy the situation, without doing your client or website any harm in the search engines?
Additional Important Questions: Do I use a 301 redirect or a 404 page not found in place of these pages? Do I need to conserve the pagerank of the original page by passing it on? What happens if I use a 404? What if the search engine have already spidered these pages?
There is a good thread over at Cre8asite Forums that details this very case. The member Mike521, dealt with a situation just like this, he got rid of the doorway pages generated from a previous company, and recommend a 404 page not found to be put in place. Basically removing the page completely. Ammon Johns goes on to say that "Search engines should always drop any correctly formed 404 error URL. The only times a search engine retains a 404 page is when the custom 404 page has been poorly done". Additionally if there is no real value on the doorway pages in terms of pagerank it would seem pointless in doing a 301 or 302 redirect to another page.
Check out the thread on Fixing Doorway Pages
