Is Google still penalizing new sites?

[TomJ]

I wanty to do some new sites shortly and am concerned that G may decide to sandbox these as soon as it finds them.(that will prove expensive for me if sanboxed for 3 months)

basically, is there any certain criteria that when met seems to draw a penalty? eg do a site and get hundereds of backlinks within a month?

this debate seems to have dropped off of late?

Cheers, Tom.

[Alleks]

I am not sure but it looks like sandboxing works for 90% of new optimized sites in our days. It seams that you will be sandboxed just trying to optimize your web site manually (I mean link exchange with other sites).

I was sandboxed after getting about 30-40 incoming links in a 2 weeks. Still waiting for "sandbox filter" removing... (2 months already).

[TomJ]

bloody hell! ;-(

i thought sandboxing lasted 90 days?

so basically, if i'm going to to a bunch of new sites and get them sandboxed.....i should just do what i gotta do and wait 3 months

Grrrrrrrrr

[JuniorOptimizer]

Too many links too fast seems to trigger the "Sandbox Effect".

[Liane]

From my experience, any new page or even changes to existing pages is reason enough for Google to send that page for a visit to the "sandbox".

I won't pretend to understand what Google is up to. Its just another "new" fact of life we must learn to accept and move on.

Create your pages or make changes and don't lose sleep over how long it takes to show up in the SERPS. Write for your intended audience and be done with it.

[bts111]

I added 60 pages less than two days ago and was very surprised I found them ranking very well in the SERPS today. The site in question is very well established.

With that said, I am waiting on 6 sites to get out of that bloody sandbox.

I am also finding it very hard to explain to clients why their sites are not being found in Google.

[smayler]

JO: <<Too many links too fast seems to trigger the "Sandbox Effect".>>

What JO said! I created large number of static pages (> 20,000) and now don’t have any traffic from G.

Will see how long will it last?

I don’t understand why would internal links trigger filter and block G traffic. Fortunately, Y and MSN still work hard and pulling out the situation :)

[randle]

It is a bit frustrating. The Google mantra is create and add new content to your sites. However, whenever I do that I am then stuck with a PRO page in my site which seems to cause a dip in my rankings.

Hopefully there is a mountain of new spam sites caught in the sand box as well. That might make it all worth the wait.

[trillianjedi]

I remember google 6 months ago talking about it's main feature and drive being the "freshness" of it's index. Still, that's another story...

Can anyone finally tell me what the tell tale signs of being caught in the sandbox are?

Is it a case of being in the index, but not returning for *any* search results whatsoever?

TJ

[JudgeJeffries]

I put up several new sites on the 7th Feb this year and they are still all languishing. If there is a delay in ranking its definitely not limited to 90 days.

[rocco]

google index is fresh. when you have an established site new pages rank fast. now, i wonder which important *news* contain of 20,000 pages and cannot wait a few months for a good ranking.

[Powdork]

when you have an established site new pages rank fast. now, i wonder which important *news* contain of 20,000 pages and cannot wait a few months for a good ranking.

It would seem that this type of site would be exactly why the sandbox was created, if it exists.

this debate seems to have dropped off of late?

Not really. It just has a different name here [webmasterworld.com].

[Marcia]

Personally I don't believe it's a penalty at all. There's a difference between something being penalized and things (like links) just not being counted or credited toward a site. A delay isn't a penalty.

[quotations]

I put up several new sites on the 7th Feb this year and they are still all languishing. If there is a delay in ranking its definitely not limited to 90 days.

I had a site in the index but missing from the serps for 14 months. Now it is doing very well.

If you have a site like that, just walk away, add some more content about once a month and come back in a year or two.

[goodroi]

A penalty would mean that you dropped. If you never were even listed how could you be dropped? Sandbox is more like a waiting room. Good content will age well and survive the waiting room, bad content doesn't age well. Also by having this waiting period, it really hampers the links from google bombing and all of the bad press it brings.

[ogletree]

I added over 2000 pages that I generated from a script and they started sending traffic within a week.

[Bobby]

Has there been any comment by GoogleGuy on the sandbox effect?

[allanp73]

Why are people still talking about this sandboxing effect. I have never seen any evidence that Google is sandboxing anything based on newest of the site or its links. The thing I have noticed is sites new and old are filtered (or greatly reduced in ranking) from the serps.
It seems not to do with age but is more a factor of where the links are coming from. In my case I have sites that were filtered and others that are not effected. The non-effected sites generally have more links and links from a greater variety of independent sources. I noticed that sites that I network are filtered and do not benefit from this time of linking. I still network them I do so for the visitor and not Google. I don't believe Google should have the right to say who and what I link to.
However, this attitude doesn't solve the problem. The only thing that trully works is build links with non-affiliated sites. All evidence I have seen points to Google placing increased emphasis on local rank and athority status of sites and much less emphasis on page factors and internal pr (this is pr from within a site or network of sites).

[mfishy]

Why are people still talking about this sandboxing effect

err...because it exists. This is why sites will not rank for anything for a couple of months and then, with the very same links shoot right up to the top...

[elgrande]

Has there been any comment by GoogleGuy on the sandbox effect?

I don't believe so. . . which probably means that it exists in one form or another and therefore is part of the algorithm, so he cannot comment on it. Just a guess, FWIW.

My site (all manual, original content) was sandboxed/filtered/whatever for ~4 months. It was doing very well in the index for a month or so after launch (until late January) and then completely disappeared for its main keywords until about a month ago. It is in the travel industry and my main keywords are CITY name and CITY REAL ESTATE.

Since launching the site, I had been adding original content on a daily or weekly basis and getting inbound links at the rate of around 3 per week, concentrating on PR4+ on-topic non-reciprocals. I tried LSI to no apparent affect. I gave up and did nothing for 2 months.

Then after reading about Hilltop I started to buy links from my competitors, starting in real estate.
Boom! My site suddenly appeared for CITY REAL ESTATE around #100. Bought more links from competitors. Page 3. Bought a link from the #1 site, rose to #3. Just bought one from the #2 site and am waiting the outcome. Did the same thing with just CITY name. Suddenly appeared at #125. More direct competitor links. . . #24. A few more, and now I am finally sitting back on Page 1 for CITY name after 5 long months.

Note: I had been getting on-topic links before, but even though they had decent page rank, the other sites' pages were not ranking for my terms. I had a PR6 and around 30 inbound links not counting my own pages. It seemed to make all the difference getting links from sites ranking for my terms and then getting more links from sites ranking above me. And it happened quickly after getting each such link. A few were reciprocal links, fyi, but the majority I had to pay for. I hadn't changed anything else on my site for 2 or 3 months. It looks like you can just buy your way to the top, and the formula looks pretty straightforward.

Note 2: My site was (and still is) in the top 5 results in Yahoo for just about every phrase I target. It's now on page 1 in Google for just about every phrase except CITY HOTELS, for which I plan to start buying my way to the top this afternoon.

I hope this helps some people stuck in the "sandbox". I still believe that this is a Hilltop-type filter that keeps sites out until they get links from authority sites for their keywords, but that's just my $.02 . Well, I guess it's also based on first-hand experience ;¬)

[mfishy]

<<until they get links from authority sites for their keywords>>

No. Sites rank with time without the addition of any links at all. This is not just my experience, but rather from observing the patterns of hundreds of sites.

[TomJ]

we added some links to a new site of ours from seperate IP's and never got sandboxed... however a lot of people i know who link all their sites together are finding it difficult.

thats why I'm going to link all sites I do from now on together from seperate IP's. All be it within the same IP range it will hopefully get past this stinking filter ;-)

just wanted to know what people were experiencing.

all this "sandbox" does is delay the inevitable! IMHO

[mfishy]

<<all this "sandbox" does is delay the inevitable!>>

Yes! Inevitably the spam will rank high!

[smayler]

<<we added some links to a new site of ours from seperate IP's and never got sandboxed... >>

I think the key is in gradual growth vs. sudden increase in number of links. We have added a page per product, and it was meant to be marketing strategy to focus on one product per page. The problem is that we added 20,000 at once.

It is clean HTML with three links on each page: view large image - buy product - return to home.

How do I know that site is sandboxed? We didn’t get a single reference from G couple days after that change was made. Not even to other areas of the site. A site had many references from G.

Mind you, I can see that G-bot is visiting daily :)

[elgrande]

No. Sites rank with time without the addition of any links at all.

I don't disagree with that. I am just hoping to help people who think that they might have been sandboxed/filtered for whatever reason by sharing my personal experience.