ciml - 8:14 pm on Oct 1, 2004 (gmt 0)

Let's just swing this back a bit.

Why does the 'Google Lag'/sandbox/whatever exist?

* Because Google want to hold pages on new domains back from ranking for the first few months? (Why just newly linked domains, surely it's just as easy to add junk to existing domains? What's wrong with new sites anyway?)

* Because Google have run out of diskspace/addresses? (Very, very unlikely.)

* Because Google have some new ranking/theming/quality system that takes a few months to run? (Months? Seems odd.)

The reason for a 120+ post thread on this subject is that the answer is not obvious. Or maybe it's really quite simple but none of us have suggested it?