The Sandbox

Does anyone know whether Freshbot will pull my site or certain pages with fresh content to the front? My site is still on page 50-52 for its title tag. Today I got 3 Google searches. I really DO NOT KNOW if my site is STILL in the sandbox or not. The first Google search appeared 8 full months after site was launched. I was thinking this meant the site was "out" of the sandbox. Now, I am wondering if it is out yet...Yes, it would be good if we had our own subforum because the sandbox only concerns those of us with new sites. We can try to find ways to move forward. I put a sort of large amount of new content on index page and main Valentine gifts entry page. I will let you know if Freshbot is any help to a sandboxed site or not, just as soon as I know. Now I have to watch the log for the Freshbot IP 64. The sandbox is KILLING us. THe closer we work together the better so we can analyze different possibilites to try to survive...

Google's Aging Delay for New Domains
By Scottie Claiborne

You've Got To Pay Your Dues

Many site owners and SEOs are worried because their new sites that
rank well in Yahoo and MSN aren't doing well in Google, and they're
blaming it on the "sandbox." The current theory is that new sites are
somehow being penalized for obtaining too many links, too quickly.

Is There a Sandbox?

Is there some sort of link analysis going on, some sort of threshold
that will get links to new sites discounted? It sounds like a logical
possibility. However, many of us who don't buy volume links or
participate in linking networks are seeing the same ranking delays.

New resource sites with a few good relevant links are taking just as
long to climb Google's ranks as the instant link pop sites. I think a
lot of people are confusing the sandbox with an "aging filter" that
appeared earlier this year.

6 Months for Results in Google

I haven't seen any brand-new sites with new domains appear at the top
of the search engine results pages (SERPs) since early in 2004. There
seems to be a delay of about 6-8 months. I've checked with many site
owners and SEOs and I haven't found anyone who's gotten a brand-new
domain ranked well in Google. If there's a magic bullet, no one's
spilling the beans.

What happens is that, as new sites get indexed, they appear for some
obscure queries; they may appear at the top for a week or so, but then
they drop to the bottom of the SERPs for several months. The page
shows a PageRank in the Google toolbar, as well as backlinks.
Everything else works fine but it just doesn't rank well for any terms
in Google. Many times not even the company name.

If you have a brand-new site that isn't ranking well, stop driving
yourself nuts wondering what you are doing wrong! Stop tweaking and
changing things, trying to influence your rankings; until the site has
been in the index a while, it doesn't seem to matter what you do to
it.

Why an Aging Delay?

My own theory is that the age factor for new sites is Google's answer
to mini-networks and other multi-site strategies intended to
artificially inflate link popularity. Many people divide what should
be a single site into multiple sites in order to capitalize on the
links that are exchanged between them. Others build a series of small
sites that are only designed to add link popularity to the main site.

By delaying the ranking of brand-new sites, the mini-network strategy
becomes more of a long-term strategy than a quick jump to the top.
Site owners who might have started new sites are going to be more
inclined to add new content on existing sites in order to avoid that
delay.

Plan Ahead for New Sites

If you are launching new sites for clients, make sure you set the
expectation that it is likely to be 7-8 months before the site
achieves any real results in Google.

We used to keep a site under wraps and launch it once it was
"perfect." Now it makes sense to get a few pages up for your new site
as soon as you complete them. The sooner Google is aware of the
domain, the better.

As soon as you have a domain name and have the hosting set up, put up
a temporary page and link to it from another site in Google's index to
start that clock ticking.

Subdomains May Avoid the Aging Delay

Pages on subdomains are generally treated as part of the main domain,
making them a possible workaround. If your client has the option of
building their site on a subdomain of a site already indexed instead
of a new top-level domain name, let them know that this may avoid the
time delay.

Paid Placement

If search engine traffic is critical to your success, get your site
out there and linked to as early as possible and plan to run an
AdWords campaign for a few months until the site can be established in
the editorial results. Yahoo and MSN do not have a delay built in, so
focus your early optimization efforts on these engines.

Don't worry, Google will eventually give your new site the respect it
deserves -- just give it time.

Scottie Claiborne
Successful Sites:
The Karcher Group

I am just around the 5 month mark and finallly got some PR. Now I am just waiting for the BL update so I can test some of the theories running around about sandbox.

Nice post Plowman. This will probably answer most of the peoples question, unless they are asking for precise times/dates when they will appear on whatever keyword

I keep seeing people give a time length estimate of the sandbox, like that article above says "6-8 months" - is there any basis in this? I've yet to hear about any new sites being released from the evil box. Seems like it's all speculation. It's at least 9 months and counting.

12 months and counting........

a small peice of test that i did some months back... i had a site with around 10 pages & perticulary a 1 year old site... so i started working on it some 4 months back for around 3 months... in the starting there were no results as my site wasn't appearing in SERPS... so i have to abandun the project for aboout 3 months cause i have to concentrate on some other website... now in the early days of jan when the PR update happened... just after that the site started appearing in SERPs for a high KW (#132).....

so what i think is working on and on and on is not point... work for about 1 month on new site (BL) then leave it for some time (dont know how mch time u have to let it aloof).... if a new site is being penalized for BLOOP then it might get out of the panelty or "sandbox" IMHO

this is just a observation....

24 months and counting..

ok fng, you win!!!

Hehe, first time iam not happy with winning

But seriously my url has been active online for over 2 years. Altough the website contained a flash under construction movie for most of that time. It did contain backlinks though + PR4 for 2 years. For 4 months i've replaced the flash movie with real html and pages, and iam only collecting serious links for 4 months or so, so i don't know if that has anything to do with it.

How does he know that? What if google will never allow a sandboxed site to apear for competitave keywords. That might be thinking "Hey, If you use any unatural SEO than we won't allow you to rank, ever. Too bad."

Maybe there should be a poll where people can tell how long it took theire seo-ed site to get out of the sandbox.

OK, I almost passed out! Yes, I only had TWO google searches so far today, but one was for two of my main keywords and when I looked to see where the searcher found my page, it was on PAGE TWO. Major keywords, very competitive. I thought I would die before EVER seeing this. My site is now almost 9 months old. Today and yesterday. a MAJOR BLITZ by Googlebot, hitting hundreds of my pages. Needless to say, I have had about 800 pages up for months and NEVER saw anything like this BLITZ. I live in the logs. HA... I feel like I am crawling out from under the logs...I do not see Freshbot yet. The page that flew to page two HAS NOT BEEN CHANGED FOR MANY MONTHS. I can't even remember the last time I changed it. So that is not a factor. But remember, only TWO Google searches today...so it is a SLOW transition out of the sandbox. And, yes, the sandbox DOES exist and it is a TIME FACTOR. I am thinking that Google owners want more seasoned sites at the front. Not sure, but a possibility, if you look at the SERPS quality from THEIR point of view... I hope this helps to encourage those of you who are still in the holding phase...

apart from this "7-8 months before the site achieves any real results in Google" comment this is a nice article to explain a few things... then again those time assumptions are wrong from what I experienced myself!

What was your experience with the sandbox? More time or less?