SEOmoz.org - In Google's Sandbox - Hilarity Ensues!

So, if you need a site to point to that's in Google's sandbox, check out SEOmoz - it apparently was boxed just after switching URLs from socengine.com/seo to seomoz.org.

Try searches like:

google historical patentinterview with dr garcia
link spam alliances
SES NYC 2005
list of seo directories
msn beta yahoo google
sandbox detection

and a ton of others... only SEOmoz and randfish searches seem to return the site high in the results.

It's a gas, because I kept wondering in private whether 301 re-directing from a non-sandboxed and very well ranking site (socengine.com) to the new one would throw it back in the box.

What's sad is that SEOmoz has never (NEVER) had any unnatural linking to it and has no real optimization tactics either. I was never interested in getting search traffic to the site, as it was more of a community resource. Of note, is that it's got some impressive stats:

7000+ natural incoming links
DMOZ Listing (that I never even submitted to!)
More than 100 links from PR5+ pages (not that PR means anything)
Links from many of the top listed domains in the field (SEW, SEOChat, TW, SERoundtable, SEOBook, Miislita, dozens more)

I think it's a terrific piece of data for everyone to get a good look at how the sandbox functions and how it affects a site. Here's just one look at how it ranks for 'google historical patent':

Google 48
Google - allinanchor 1
Google - allintitle 1
Google - allintext 1
Yahoo! 2
MSN 3

Enjoy!

Wow, great info Rand! No one should ever second guess that there is a sandbox with these stats.

D

Wouldn't this give support to the theory that all new sites get sandboxed?

I guess that sort of throws a wrench in the theory that the sandbox is only associated with aggressive SEO and not new sites in general, no?

Either way, thanks for the info. I've read a lot about 301's avoiding the sandbox. Here is at least 1 example demonstrating that it doesn't work, or at least that it doesn't always work.

Well gee rand, if you believe it, it *must* be true! ;)

Actually, I'm having a bit of trouble wit my "new" home site - it's been up for 8 months but didn't have much content until a few weeks ago. Now G crawls it but no SERPs.

But I've got to ask - is there anything else you did besides transfer the domain?

BTW, I used to know a beautiful blond in Tacoma named Melissa Fish - any relation?

could be, Randfish has been around the pond a few times, 17,700 times according to Google ;)

RMC - No sorry, my last name is actually Fishkin...

I think that it tripped Google's filter with a lot of blogroll links - lots of sitewide links from lots of different domains. What's interesting to me is that the links were so highly relevant and natural in terms of everything from anchor text to timing. I believe what this shows me (that I didn't already know from other examples) is that the Google filter is very, very sensitive right now.

I know a Will Fishkin in CA - any relation to him? ;)

Sort of like my ex-girlfiend! ops:

woah woah woah.. wait up just one second. let me make sure i got my facts straight...

- seomoz.org was once out of the sandbox (which i believe it once was) ....

- socengine.com/seo/ was 301'd to seomoz.org

- seomoz.org got SPANKED back into the sandbox?

did i get my facts straight?

if so, why couldn't i 301 any one of my 'undsandboxed' subfolders to a competitor? seems like i could bowl them right off the map.... at least temporarily.

i feel a new experiment coming on if this is true.

Nope this ain't new and this is the reason why it dropped. It will however come back in time. This happens quite often for sites that undergo a redevelopement and have to mod-rewrite the urls to new ones that reflect keywords. (ask Barry some of his clients have experienced this as well). In my best opinion, I rarely if ever advise anyone to mess around with already well ranked pages unless they have too. Or unless you don't mind waiting till the engines pick up the new url in due time. Its better to disallow the page, or take it off the site, and create a new one with no redirect involved with the content from the pages you want moved.

The other good solution to this is to do a 302 redirect instead of a 301. As the search engines will not permanantly remove the page from the start. You can still keep getting the traffic from the old page as the new one gets picked up.

hmmm... interesting... thanks for sharing that Rand,

If you think that my sig links were damaging, I'll take them down. If you want me to keep them up, then just let me know how you want them edited for the new address.

I think that you should send an W**? email to the engineers at google.

I think I'm just going to let it chill, EGOL - you're welcome to re-point the link if you'd like - the address simply moved from socengine.com/seo/ to seomoz.org

Ben - I really appreciate you weighing in - we've only done one other 301 move recently and the rankings were totally unaffected, though they were neither competitive nor particularly good at the time of the move. Clearly, where once Google was better at using 301s than Yahoo! & MSN, that has shifted. That's very good advice you have for others - I'm just glad I was able to do this with a site that doesn't need SE traffic...

I don't get it, is seomoz.org a new domain or was it pre-established?

You moved your old website to a new domain, why wouldn't it get sandboxed? (even with the 301 redirect) Or am I confused about what's going on?

When did you start the redirect? When did you do the move?