Why does the 'Google Lag' exist?

Trying to understand its purpose.

[bakedjake]

I had some in-depth discussion this weekend with some friends about the sandbox. Every theory on how to beat it kept coming back to one central problem - no one is sure why it exists.

I feel very strongly that until we have a good grasp on why it exists, it will be very hard to beat.

I don't buy the explanation that it's intended to be a method of stopping spam. Why? One, there's too much collateral damage it is doing. Two, if you accept the 80/20 principle (20% of spammers are doing 80% of the spamming), and you realize that there are multiple ways already of beating the sandbox that all of those spammers are aware of, it doesn't make sense anymore.

So, why does the sandbox exist?

The most obvious effect of the sandbox is that it prevents new domains (not pages) from ranking for any relatively competitive term. So, start thinking like a search engine - what would be the benefit of this?

[isitreal]

renee, given that nobody else here has any tangible evidence, I'll go with the pure logic.

<<<<looks like when google transferred the page to the supplemental it transferred the page record lock-stock-and barrel.

And since your logic actually explains the things I'm seeing, like in this case, where I rebranded a site, it entered the sandbox, lost all its pagerank. But then one day I was rechecking the page rank, when a single lone file suddenly showed up with its old pagerank. That vanished later. This file was buried in the site, and was the only file with page rank on the site. So your logic perfectly explains this phenomena. [given that creating an algo is pretty much a purely logical process, obviously one of the best tools to decipher/reverse engineer it is logic, that's sort of a no brainer, or should be... but my college logic teacher told me he'd seen a drastic decline in his student's abilities to perform logic with the onslaught of the tv generations....]

[edited by: isitreal at 3:21 pm (utc) on Oct. 5, 2004]

[doc_z]

I don’t know why the 'Google Lag' exists, but it seems to me that it’s just a side effect. Also, it seems to me that this phenomenon is related to the 'no title / no snippet' problem. From the results of test pages I guess that the reason either has to do with a change in the PR propagation (e.g. due to a change in the number of iterations performed for PR calculation) or with the dublicate content determination.

[renee]

>>I hope my encouragement hasn't made you think that the theory is fact Renee.:)

Sorry to burst your bubble cabbie, but i don't let encouragements color my thinking! ;)

>>As Mfishy and others have said PR and backlinks are no indication of a site being in or out of the sandbox.

we would be a lot better of if you used logic instead of believing what mfishy says. ;) from a previous post, i said that a site is not in the sandbox if it either has pr or is listed as a backlink. this is proof positive that the site/pages were part of the matrix of backlinks used by google to calculate pr. AND the reverse is not true: not having pr or not listed in backlinks DOES NOT mean it is in the sandbox!
since there is no positive indication from google (just like a supplemental tag), we can only deduce from the above rule whether a site is not in the sandbox. so people, saying you are in the sandbox does not make it so!

>>Does this mean its back to the drawing board?

let me know what you think (technical only, no bs) and i'll do my best to answer them.

[graywolf]

i said that a site is not in the sandbox if it either has pr or is listed as a backlink.

This is untrue, I have 3 sites with PR that are in the lag box.

[leveldisc]

a site is not in the sandbox if it either has pr or is listed as a backlink

Sorry, but my site has PR, is listed as a backlink and is in the sandbox. Absolutely no doubt. None.

If you want to sticky me I'll send you the url.

[Jane_Doe]

>>>> i have no tangible evidence whatsoever, just pure logic!

Logical assumptions are generally based on tangible evidence. Many sites have toolbar PR and are listed in backlinks and are still in the sandbox, which would invalidate a core component of your hypothesis.

I have one sandboxed site that is a PR 5 on the toolbar and the majority of the Google traffic comes from people finding it using the "link: " command on site it links to, so it obviously is in a lot of other site's backlinks.

[webdude]

But then again, this might just be another of my stupid ideas :-)

Well that went well :-) New topic maybe? After looking at it. I am not sure even I would have filled it out.

[mfishy]

<<we can only deduce from the above rule whether a site is not in the sandbox.>>

Why would anyone deduce that? If you are using TBPR, it is all meaningless anyway...

[cabbie]

>>>>but i don't let encouragements color my thinking!<<

Nor does it seem that facts do.:)

[renee]

>>If you want to sticky me I'll send you the url.

please send me your url so i can take a look.

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again, just because you say your site is in the sandbox does not make it so. you can say your site exhibits the symptoms of being in the sandbox, but the reasons MAY be totally different! the logic works something like this:

you are place in a box and transported to space where there is zero gravity. the box is then rotated so that you now experience 1G. Can you conclude that you are on earth? No. All you can say is that you are experience 1G (symptom). logic 101. this example is borrowed from einstein.