Imaster - 7:06 pm on Aug 25, 2004 (gmt 0)

I really don't believe that there is a sandbox effect.

There is a sandbow effect actually which is making newer sites much more difficult to rank. We launched 2 sites some 3-4 months back, one commercial and one pure informational. Both are having really really difficult time ranking in the serps, in fact even a search for "SiteName Keyword" first brings up other sites which would have linked to our site with the keyword "Sitename" and coincidently even happens to have the "Keyword" in the same page. Its that bad!

All of our other old sites are doing very good in the serps and we had promoted them in a similar manner as we are trying to promote these 2 sites. I think there is something about sites being semi-penalized on the basis of speed of acquiring links. If anthing looks unnatural, then there is a sandbox trigger.

What I see happening is Google takes time to filter sites so new sites enjoy a brief moment in the sun until they get hit hard just like everyone else.

We never even enjoyed any type of 'brief moment in the sun', the pageviews are just not there.

Has this been happening to non-commercial sites at all as well? Has anyone been able to get rankings for new informational sites without having to sit it out on the bench?

On the contrary, the pure informational site that we launched is still completely in Sandbox, whereas the slightly commercial site has started to rank just a little well as compared to earlier.