Any evidence of non-commercial sites being sandboxed?

Only commercial or all sites affected?

[Marcia]

Instead of doing new sites I'm just adding sections on to existing ones, if there's enough of a topical relationship possibility.

I know there's been a lot of talk about this happening for many months now, but I'm assuming it's all been commercial sites. Some even think it may hit affiliate sites harder.

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?

[dirkz]

> Found in SERPs for looking for the site itself, or ranking for search terms?

Ranking for search terms (as I said, not competitive, but ranking Top 10).

> BTW, has anyone given any thought to a connection between the so-called sandboxing and that Local Rank patent Google got last year?

I think IP monotony has some correlation with sandbox effects. Has anyone the same experience?

[dirkz]

> Take a successful domain move it to a completely new URL, wait two months and I assure you will beleieve sandboxing exists. Don't forget your 301's.

Did the IP change?

[DaveAtIFG]

I am 100% certain that a boost from new incoming links is delayed. The delay appears to vary from 2-3 months because the spidering/indexing/boosting cycle is unclear. Call it a sandbox if you like.

However, Google still wants to provide fresh content so I suspect newly published pages are given a few weeks of prominence before being ranked entirely on their merits. I suspect the length of this period of prominence is related to the "spidering/indexing/boosting cycle" too.

Does this apply to both commercial and non-commercial pages? I believe so, but what is a non-commercial page? There are very few purely non-commercial pages IMHO, a few personal home pages and a few "family news" type pages...

[mona]

I don't dare offer any theories, only my experience.

My own new personal site (non- commercial) was picked up by Google and ranking well in less than 2 months. The only incoming link is from dmoz. It started showing PR (toolbar) in that same time frame.

But the two commercial sites I'm working on have been live for 2 months and they're both getting no love from Google. Both have a few incoming links from decent PR sites. No dmoz listings yet. Neither is showing PR (toolbar), even though one is showing backlinks. One is an affilliate site, the other is not.

All three are on the same IP block. I do believe in the sandbox, I just don't know what triggers it.

[nuevojefe]

Mona,

When you say "ranking well" are the key phrases that your site is ranking well for used in the anchor text of your dmoz listing?

[dirkz]

> I am 100% certain that a boost from new incoming links is delayed.

But why are some sites ranking very fast, like Mona's or in my experiment?

[Powdork]

Did the IP change?

Yes, it was calving off a directory from one site form a new site with a different host.

[mona]

When you say "ranking well" are the key phrases that your site is ranking well for used in the anchor text of your dmoz listing?

The one in the the anchor text is #1. And certainly the other phrases ranking well are not nearly as competitive as the ones for commercial sites either. But I have been doing SEO for a long time, and there is a diiference to how that site is performing vs. the other 2. I can see it and (this may sound weird) but I can feel it, too. I just don't know why - there could easily be factors I'm not even thinking about.