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It sounds nice but has anyone seen this working in practice? If so, did you set up all the pages and then just add the content later or did you just have a one page placeholder (index page only) that you linked to for awhole?
OR
Just upload your whole page and keep updating and after 2 months you will be out of the sandbox.
I will choose option 2 since this will be much better for those 1 or 2 accidental visitors that otherwise only see the holding page.
I do not know what is working as yet but I think that it is best to try different things to beat the dreaded sandbox.
I've got it figured this way: Google wants quality sites in their index and I intend to be creating a quality site. So by putting up a link in advance I have done Google a service by enabling them to know that this site is "coming soon" and have given them a headstart advantage in including what will be a quality site in their index for the benefit of their users.
It's a win-win deal, so why not?
...so why not?
To play devil's advocate on this one... and this is just speculation, and thinking-out-loud, sleep-deprived speculation at that...
It's generally thought that Google's anchor text boost is in some way related to the content on page receiving the link. If you have a page that only says "coming soon," you're not going to have too many market niches where inbound link text matching this phrase is going to give you a useful boost.
I also think that link text and inbound PR work together... that the anchor text kick from a high PR link boosts you more than anchor text from a low PR link.
It could be that "sandboxing" the links, as we're now supposing, is done quite separately from looking at anchor text and recipient page text. I don't know how Google's index puts all this stuff together. But I will bet, if a lot of inbound links start connecting into unrelated pages, Google will start putting this all together in the sandbox stage... and that the net result will be that, eventually, page content changes will take longer to affect serps as well.
I should add, as a PS, that I've seen pages with nothing but graphics on them do well because of inbound anchors, so maybe I'm overrating the importance of on-page content, but I don't think so.
I don't know whether Google has the resources to keep track of relevance patterns over time. We're assuming that they might keep track of link acquisition rates over time, so this isn't that far fetched.
Hope this makes sense. It's more a drift than a reasoned argument....
page content changes will take longer to affect serps as well.I can't see that happening independently because the affect on freshness would be too great. Just consider a wait for being properly indexed as a cost of doing business, if you prefer the actual monetary costs then buy traffic for the first couple months.
Remember, Google doesn't look bad for not listing a site that nobody visits. Build a quality site and get G-independent traffic. Then Google will look bad for not ranking you in the eyes of the almighty (surfer) and perhaps this will expedite your proper position.
[webmasterworld.com...]
What I'd add to what it says is that not only is the trick likely to going away... but I think that anyone using it is likely to get flagged. Google would ask, who is able to get links to non-existent pages?
Re Scarecrows's remarks...
The problem is that links, and their anchor text, are considered sacred by Google (and Yahoo), without any cross checking of whether the link or anchor text is valid. A 404 "not found" will eventually get a page removed from the index. But the juice from external linking remains in cyberspace through link rot, and there is no effort by the engines to clean up or validate this residue.
I would bet that there is going to be an effort. Gardener's know that weeding is part of the process, and I think that Google is doing weeding big time.
I think lag time is a much more descriptive term than sandbox (which, as Brett has pointed out, is confused with some other stuff that had the name first).
I hope, if we use lag time enough, that we can convert the terminology.
lag time - lag time - lag time - lag time
Thanks for the info, that is what I was looking for.
Nope - I put that. I was trying to remember Brett's terminology but couldn't. I also kept sandbox there because it's so recognized.
We have to wean people off of the word...
If I put a site on hosting while it's being developed, I won't let it be 404. To me it's far better to have something up that's attractive even if it's just a color background and a pretty graphic with coming soon and the site name. I won't do links 'til it's up, but this way I can get some lined up in advance with quality on topic sites, and I'm not "hunting" - it's people I know already, I've known their sites for years - even given then one way links from other sites I've got without even asking for any back. PR4 even, with a display page. For the right reasons - they're good sites, I like the people and they have beautiful things to offer.
It's keyword1 niceword unhyphenated, that'll be the main first word in keyword phrases plus another that's a synonym. Out of 899K it's sitting at #10 for the site name, word1 will be the *primary* theme of the site.
I don't care if it gets flagged, I've got a legitimate reason. They're basically Mom 'n Pops who will be linking in; they're scared to death of PR0's and I don't blame them. As long as I know I'm doing nothing wrong, it's MY site and I'll do what I want. Besides, Google is not the only crap game in town, it'll be optimized for Yahoo anyway.
Matter of fact, I think I'll put up the top level sub-directory index pages with "coming soon" with links from the homepage and a site map to boot, linked from all of them. :P
I did it this week Jeff. And as soon as the homepage was changed the cache was updated. I did add a few /subdirectory/ category pages, and Googlebot has visited them all as of right now though only the homepage is in the index and it's the only one with PR. No site map yet, that's soon to come when there are enough pages. Google has been all over those pages like a $2 garden hoe. :)
And BTW, adding some text to the homepage made a bit of a difference in rankings for "keyword niceword," moving it up 4 notches. No biggie, but intesting to observe.
what is the difference
If it's a very short development process, probably none. OTOH, if the development cycle is likely to take a month or two (or longer) due to logo/graphic development, copywriting, client approval at multiple stages, etc., then you can get a headstart on the process. One the development and approval cycle are complete, you may not have as long to wait for actual results.
In the future I'm definitely going to do this for new sites, as soon as the project starts, register domain name, set up basic site, basic html, with basic keyword targets, should only take a few hours to whip up a site like that, by time all content gathered, design done, site is fully in google, very nice idea.
>>Inbound links from others will still have to go through the lag time sequence.
They will, so that having something up enables me to get a few quality inbound links before the site is fully developed. This way I've got something to show people early on. It has to all be planned out in advance, but it's developed in gradual stages.
OK, back to being a wiseguy. ;)
Robert_Charlton
Google's anchor text boost is in some way related to the content on page receiving the link. If you have a page that only says "coming soon," you're not going to have too many market niches where inbound link text matching this phrase is going to give you a useful boost.
Don't count on it!
True, it's not a competitive market, but I've had a page sitting at #1 out of over a million pages for a few years based on anchor text from what's actually two hops back in the linking chain, from within the site. The direct link from a page only has one word out of the phrase in the alt attribute of a thumbnail graphic linked to the full page - it's just a display page. That is how I found out that alt attribute anchor text isn't meaningless, and is why I picked up on that one little thing from Hilltop.
There is *nothing* on the page, and I mean nothing. There is only a page title and a background graphic. Not a speck of text. That's it.
That said, what I'm putting up on this one new site are genuine pages with a bit of text, photos and graphics, with more content and pages to be added as time permits. It is legit, just not the finished product.
I thought that the sandbox-lag-time is for a site, not for the links to it, so no matter how many links it won't rank. But once it's out of the sand all links are effective, plus new links only take the usual time to be effective (more like a few weeks at most rather than months).
dirkz, it is not necessarily be for the site, but for the links. This sandbox-lag-time can also be seen for new links from old page of one site to the existing page of another site too.
