Article Discussion: The Sandbox Effect: Not a Nice Place to Play

Wayne Hurlbert eloquently offers calming advice to webmasters who are stuck in the Sandbox. To help allay the confusion some may feel when their SERPs drop after their site was ranking well, Hurlbert lists ways to take advantage of the hiatus to improve your site and turn something that seems like a detriment into an asset.


Read the full article here: The Sandbox Effect: Not a Nice Place to Play

"A fatal error for your website would be to stop adding content while under the Sandbox damper."

Couldn't be more true....amen to that!

The effect that we see might also be behavioral. If the main website contributer sees the ranking as #1 then he/she may feel comfortable with not producing much new content. With the way SERPs lag, even though, one might not realize the site is on the precipice until it is too late the content has been judged as "Old" and has tumbled out of the search engine results.

Just a thought.

could sandbox be side-effect of new page bonus? After new page bonus deminished, you're in a sandbox.

There are some people who believe the sandbox exists. There are some people who believe there is no such thing as the sandbox. There are millions of people who have never heard of it.

The sandbox is indeed controversial.

If there is a new site bonus, then it would be wise for a webmaster to continue adding fresh content. That would provide two benefits.

1) You would receive the blog fresh content benefit as blogs are loved by Google for their continual updating with new content. A site can take advantage of that fact by adding more fresh content too. The net effect is the same. It works as well, if there is no sandbox.

2) You would benefit if there is a sandbox effect. The fresh additional content would propel your site back to the top of the rankings after the sanbox was lifted. We are talking about a possibly major boost here.

Whether the sandbox exists, or is merely an urban myth, the addition of fresh content is always a good thing for a site.

My article suggestions are designed to work either way. :grin:

Hello,

The article was ok, but it offered no insight on the topic. It is always nice to get general advice and pep talk, but where was the lesson?

does this 'sandbox effect' apply only to new sites, or to newly engineered sites?

I had a very similar problem with 2 websites, niether new, both newly engineered, they shot to the top for a month or 2, and yes, you guessed it, nowhere to be found.

One of the site's www.videoconnections.co.uk , had lots of new content added when it was doing well, new products, press releases, new pages,links, anchors et al. but to no avail, it still appears to be 'sandboxed'. I suppose it's been 4 months now, so there may be an improvement soon. Only time will tell.

This article does have a truthful foundation in my opinion. I have experienced the google 'sandbox' several times. And every single time it happens, MSN and Yahoo become more generous. I am glad to know I am was not dreaming this and others have experienced the same.

Not to take away from your article. It is a great one. But to provide more information here are more articles on this concept.

Early discovery at http://www.seroundtable.com/archives/000346.html
Naming it http://www.seroundtable.com/archives/000412.html
More insight http://www.seroundtable.com/archives/000417.html
Leaving the sandbox http://www.seroundtable.com/archives/000455.html
SEO Chat Forum Sandbox http://www.seroundtable.com/archives/000555.html

Garrett from WebProNews summed up a lot of the coverage I worked on to help develop this theory at http://www.webpronews.com/insiderre...ctRevealed.html

Sorry if you think this is off topic, but...

You would think that if Google wanted to curb SPAM, they would drop the new site bonus. What I am seeing is sites which are totally cloaked that get this bonus. They show up and stay high in the rankings for a month or so on about 150 terms, then get the boot. Well, for that month that they are there, they rake in some massive bucks, all the while generating a new site in the same basic fashion only to go live as soon as the first one gets the boot. New site bonus is the most ridiculous, pro-SPAM bonus I have ever seen.

Ask yourself, would you create a dynamically generated, cloaked site, earn $20,000 in a month, and then worry about getting kicked? To me that is taking advantage of a broken system. Hummm... why am I typing this instead of doing it?

Hi there just joined. Just curious about this sandbox thing at google.

ever been in a sand box and gotten out?

kind of.......I engineered a site which went 'bang', straight to the top (woo hoo). And then a month or so later, page 60ish for most terms (boo hoo). So I spent the mext two months adding more content, internal links and such to no avail.
Then finally I figured 'maybe I've over optimised', so I removed a lot of work, and the site came back but only to page 3, where it appears to be stuck. Hence 'kind of....'

The sandbox has nothing to do with your onpage SEO Dave, your ranking woes sound more like just a case of not appealing to the SE and having to adjust

seo guy "a case of not appealing to the SE"

Seoguy I am an blank white page - how does one appeal to the SE other than text on the page?
Do you mean linking?

Adjust?

Adjust what? Adjust with more linking?

Thanks

Why don't you start with reading the articles posted in this thread. Then if you have a specific question, go ahead and ask it.