Links From Sandboxed Sites Not Counting

Anybody observed this?
I was researching some sites last night that "are" in the Sandbox technically. I say that lightly because it could be a subjective interpretation. As I was doing my research, I traced its outgoing links from the site to other sites, and it appears that while those links may show up in the backlinks, they do not seem to be doing much at all towards improving positions in the serps for certain keyphrases. It could be a function of PR, in that its way to low at this point to matter. But from over 10 examples I have seen it appears these links are "worthless" more or less. There is a lot of other factors involved of course, but what to throw it out there and see what others had observed.

How are you coming to that conclusion? It seems something very difficult to determine, since most sandboxed sites have little or no PR showing. If they were pointing at a site with a lot of other good inbound links, you wouldn't expect the links from low PR, new sites to have much of an impact. And if they are pointing at other newer, lower PR sites without a lot of other quality links, you wouldn't expect those site to rank well. So how do you find a site that "should" gain in ranking from links from sandboxed sites but don't?

I am not sure but logically it could be correct. Site which are facing sandbox are not getting benifits of backlinks and PR so might be they are not passing PR too.

I've actually suspected this myself, but there were so many variables and such a large degree of error & unknowns from that I could never make any decisive conclusion, but it's nice to see someone else thinking along the same lines.

I'm almost sure sandboxed sites don't pass PR and backliks power.

I think that links from a sandboxed site are not worth much because any links INTO a sandboxed site are ineffective.

Assuming the sites will move out of the "sandbox" the links from the site will have value in the future. Over time our site's PR improved, our SERP's improved, and I suspect the links from our site gave value to other sites.


Assuming there are sites of real value in the sandbox they will ultimately rise in SERPs (maybe get good PR if google continues to evaluate PR and update it) and their outbound links will have real value. If google doesn't move these good sites out of the sandbox it will become irrelevant to other search engines that don't penalize new sites.

Imagine if the only web sites of value in all of google were developed prior to May, 2004.

Dave

If what I propose is true, then it sure puts a damping factor on linking networks, or the usefulness SEO wize for linking out. Its back to the drawing board where links are created naturally. Which would be inline with the way Google would like to probably see things. Buts is speculation I know, its interesting however.



Simple, its called testing, testing, testing. If some of yall remember not all sandboxed sites are PRless. Some just cant rank period no matter how many links you throw at them. But they still get a PR, since May or whenever you could get stuck in that section of sites not going anywhere. In any case, what I did was establish several outgoing links from sandboxed sites to established sites already ranking in Google for keyphrases that would allow simple deductions to be drawn from improvements in the serps (aside from algo changes etc..). Simple structured test. Monitored with each backlink update. What happened was normal, new backlinks picked up, but different terms I used to modify rankings (anchor text), didn't move at all. Alright I looked at PR, many other factors, keep it as unbiased as possible in order to determine results. Sometimes the problem people have with testing is because its highly biased. Theories are biased a lot of times on unqualified evidence. So I watched this for about 2 months, and still didn't see changes. I then changed the links to use anchor for more competitive terms or locally specific terms. No luck either. BUT there was plenty of backlinks showing for the established sites from the sandboxed site.



Like I said above, established sites. Not "authority" sites, but those would work too, if you monitor subpages and keyphrase sets.



This I have known for awhile. Build a new site, buy or get some links to the site, bamn, you got backlinks, but you are still number #500 in the results.



This is a good point, and I agree with that. I mean if you have watched updates in the past, which I have for years, you can see how new sites sometimes rise up like oil in water in the serps. Sometimes faster than others.



Which there are, and it makes sense to include these. Someone said the sandbox was that google had run out of resources for these sites. Thats just plain dumb, with the resources they do have, they should be able to mount an expedition into the "invisible web" and come back with some bounty. lol.

Phoenix,

Thanks for the explaination of your testing methodology. Just curious, did you try replacing the inbound links from the sandboxed sites with links for comperable non-sandboxed sites to confirm that the control group links DO in fact increase the rankings?

Brandall, good question. :-) The answer is yes and no. While I was testing with the sandboxed sites, I didn't do any other linking for the sites, as well as instruct the owners not to do anything (not that they would). I have established some links as of recent from a few directories (bluefind being one of them) as a test for this. However its getting costly for directories, so I am switching to blogs. Both are reliable links for this test, as they have established PR, do well in google, and get picked up readily by gbot. This was recently done, but I am guessing it will help. I will check a few things tonight to see if they have done any good. Let you know.

I have yet to see any links from sandboxed sites doing anyone any good until the site is removed from the sandbox. That generally takes around 90 days currently. It is not that big of a deal and just requires a tad more patience tho.

Whether links from sites supported by Sandboxed links will count is certainly an interesting question.

My personal observation is that it's very much the links themselves that are sandboxed, rather than the sites themselves - but obviously for sites with no established linkage in the first place, the whole issue is very acute.

So how do other sites - news sites, for example - get content quickly on Google? Perhaps "age of site" has something to do with it - perhaps issues of authority come into play. (A possible interest sideline, but isn't Google News powered by news feeds anyway, rather than crawlers? Perhaps this is how news sites specifically avoid it?).

So, overall, my personal perception would be to expect links from sites to be sandboxed in general, regardless. However, the whole sandboxing issue is obviously a fairly oblique set of uncertainties, with no real absolutes regarding what is actually happening.

If anyone wishes to trace the Google Sandbox theory, I've placed a fairly good resource list, tracking the major public commentaries on it, here:
http://www.platinax.co.uk/news/archives/2004/09/the_google_sand.html

And to prove I, Brians point beautifully..

http://forums.seochat.com/showthrea...47&page=1&pp=15

Jane

Why is everyone so 'het up' regarding the sandbox? If it exists or if it doesn't why worry about it?

Surely you should just remained focused on working on your website, link building and seo. If your site doesn't rank straight away, give it time. If you prevail and spend a few hours every day working on optimising your site, adding content and gaining links you will eventually see some results.

Because clients expect the effects of link-building to occur within a reasonable time frame - and the sandbox can impact that time frame, leading to restless and even unhappy clients.