Strange experience for new site in google

Site shows up in rankings for a day, now nowhere

[filo]

I just started a small site and built 8 pages of unique content and an index. I plan to add a lot more to this site but it's going to be a slow process.

I got a couple of relevant PR4 and 5 incoming links and the googlebot came to my site several times in the space of a couple days.

On Tuesday of this week, I noticed that my site was on the 3rd page momentarily for a specific keyword phrase.

By the end ot Tuesday, however, my site was nowhere to be found in the rankings for this term.

Now I see that most of the pages I created for this site are in the index but I am not ranked for any of my targeted keywords.

Do I assume this is just the standard flux as the new site makes its way into the SERPS or is it possible that I have already received a penalty?

The site is mostly text using h1 tags and very clean code. It is fairly heavily optimized as well.

Any insight appreciated.

[prairie]

Hi Filo,

The Google index has been shuffling around a fair bit recently.

In the past new pages seemed to get a temporary boost before disappearing again for a while.

I'm not sure if that's still the case, but it might be an explanation.

Prairie.

[lemon2311]

the same thing happened to me as well...went from 2nd page to nowwhere while having 6 pages indexed from the site

[tenerifejim]

I've often see new sites jump into the higher serp listings then drop back again. I believe it is quite common.

[simonuk]

It's very common. In the old days it was in a constant flux. One day your number 1 next day nowhere to be found. This would last a month or two.

These days however you get a brief glimmer of hope before losing it for a long time. I've seen reports of the sandbox effect only lasting a couple of months but I have a dozen sites I launched in May that are still waiting for their ranking and I've not had PR added to any site launched since July.

Sit back and ride it out is all you can do (unless you want to PPC).

[filo]

Whew!

Thanks for putting me at ease guys. I was afraid I had triggered some over optimization penalty. I suspect that the sandbox is the more likely cause.

I've had some success with avoiding the sandbox with sites that are very heavily updated.

I'm going to try to keep adding new pages to this site as well as new incoming links and hopefully I can shorten the sandbox time.

[Kewe]

Hello,

I got the same problem with my sites. I have 10 sites and al my pages are listed at number 1 for te main keywords. But the last 2 weeks, 3 of my sites are in the morning at number 1 en at the end of the day they are totally disappeared.

About a half year ago I had the same problem its not possible to do something about it. It takes about 4 weeks and after that is all normal.

So don't worry.

[Powdork]

It takes about 4 weeks and after that is all normal.

Typical wait for a new domain these days is three months+

[notsosmart]

Sit back and ride it out is all you can do (unless you want to PPC).

PPC? Blasphemy! Why pay for it, when you can get it for free.

(Well, unless, of course, you can't) ;-)