A doorway page is a web page made to rank for specific search terms and then push visitors to a different destination, often through a redirect or link chain. The page may be thin, duplicate, or stuffed with keywords, because its real purpose is not to inform the user but to capture search traffic and route it elsewhere.
In cyber security, doorway pages matter because they are common in spam, fraud, and phishing campaigns. Attackers use them to exploit search engines and the trust of a legitimate domain, especially after compromising a site. Defenders look for abnormal redirects, hidden landing pages, content that differs for crawlers and browsers, and unusual rewrite or proxy rules. Doorway abuse is a strong sign of search manipulation and broader site compromise.