rocco - 10:01 am on Mar 17, 2005 (gmt 0)

the original question:

'Does the "sandbox" Only Affect Phrases Containing Popular Words?'

the answer:

no. i have a site with a fantasy name, several months old, 1000's of backlinks (maybe 1% mentioning the the site name in anchor text), yahoo & dmoz listing, but it is not listed in the top 100 when searching for the site name. the sites listed above my site either:
- have a mispelling which happens to be my page title
- link to my site (not with my site name in the anchor text or anywhere else on their page)
oddly, my site gets 1000's of google visits a day for totally different searches which are much more competitive.

conclusion:
so, it does affect not only popular words, but also fantasy ones.