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That is to say, should one be checking to see if the sites are out of the sandbox regularly or only when they know there is a major Google update? :)
Thanks
Mc
Although a few brave souls claim that their new sites never got sandboxed I believe almost every one here that put a new site up since February is still nowhere in Google.
I'd be one of those. Have been launching new sites every month since the "supposed sandbox" was "supposedly introduced". Some of my sites don't rank as high instantly, some do. I don't blame it on some imaginary Google God who penalises new sites (what a crazy notion, and if I were Google I'd be insulted that people would think I would come up with such a daft idea) I simply need to alter a few things and work harder. My shortest time so far was two weeks from going online to being No.6 and currently am No.1 for the same term (a very, very competitive one in the UK). That domain was purchased in August and the site was put on line a few weeks after if I recall correctly. Same story with alot of my sites.
That domain was purchased in August and the site was put on line a few weeks after if I recall correctly.What do you mean purchased. We're talking about brand new never before used domains.
I'm with JudgeJeffries on this one. I have put six SEO'd sites up since February. On each of these I have used the white hat techniques that have been reasonably successful on all my other sites during the last three years. None of them have emerged.
You are truly a miracle worker!
In the last six months all of my new sites are unquestionably held back. No dodgy linking no nothing.
There is obviously something built into G's algo to hold them back.
Does anyone know when you come out - I am 6 months on one!
Regards
Rod (sick of building sandcastles)
A site I worked on started ranking in the index in earnest in May or June. I don't claim to have done anything special to my site that allowed it in. In fact, the way way I found out about the lifting of the sandbox effect was here at WW. At that time, there was a thread that said sandboxed sites were no longer sandboxed. I checked my site and sure enough, it was in the index freely and ranking fine.
To reiterate what I think. Sandboxing has been occurring since February 2004. One time, around May or June 2004, sites were let out of the sandbox. I am waiting (as are many, many others) for the next time sites are allowed out.
I do feel that since May or June of this year, sites have not effectively made it out of the sandbox. I think that when the sandbox is lifted, once again all sites will be allowed in.
I do have a new site (released after June 2004) that recieves what some might call significant traffic from Google on a daily basis. I still consider this site to be sandboxed as it is only receiving a small part of the visitors it will hopefully be receiving when the site is let out of the sandbox.
[edited by: gomer at 6:36 pm (utc) on Nov. 20, 2004]
Now started feeling a little let down in recent times for, the new sites that I was able to rank for some moderatley competitive keywords with ease, are now seeming next to impossible, yet ranking older sites for such keywords is like going out for a stroll on one nice evening. Keywords that used to rank just by adding them in the Title and content, will not rank even after achieving relevant backlinks now, while older sites even without keyword in Title are ranking for the very same terms.
May be there are few things happen only to few individuals and sigh, am one among them. Keep the good work going Internetheaven, and if possible please share the secret, for Google will be a better place to search on.
Best wishes
Mc
Try looking up a new movie and finding their official site.I looked up sponge bob movie and was surprised to see www.spongebobmovie.com at #1. Then when I visited the page I realised it was a url rewrite of some sort from nickjr.com. The I tried 'after the sunset'. It's there, but it's been around since 2002. I'm not sure if movies are a good example.
The sandbox has absolutely tortured us. Older sites do better and better, but new ones prove quite challenging.
Not in my case. Not at all...
Older sites spidered once every week, newer sites most days.
DerekH
Google only visited a hundred or two times each month from June through early September. Then the Gbot started coming around more often. So far this month, it's crawled 2,991 times.
Near as I can tell, every page is in the index. For the 13 main keyphrases I'm trying to rank for, the site is #25 for one keyphrase, #52 for another, #94 for another, and all the way up to #291 for the others.
By point of contrast, I have another site on the same topic that's been online for 2 1/2 years. It ranks from #1 to #8 for the very same keyphrases.
Not in my case. Not at all...It's true. My sandboxed site gets spidered constantly. If only I could sell some advertising to those pesky spiders.
Older sites spidered once every week, newer sites most days.
If so could you share whether
1. It has a dmoz listing and whether that listing has migrated to the G directory.
2. Has a Y! Directory listing.
3. Has aggressively gotten a large volume of backlinks.
I know people are loathe to do this, but if you could sticky me a url.
Here are the numbers:
- new domain prevously un-registered - 4 months old
- got PR2 in last update (site only had few links at time of update) - should be >PR5 now.
- moderativly competitve term - 'Widgets'
- site called 'Widgets Arena'
- ranks number one for 'Widgets Arena' (no one else has this name) and a couple of other non searched for terms
- listed in DMOZ and many other directories (not Yahoo)
- >150 links (other than DMOZ clones), many with PR>4
- 50 or so of the links are on topic
- ranks number one for allinanchor:widgets
- all my experience tells me it should rank 2nd or 3rd for Widgets
- NOT RANKED IN FIRST 1000!
If thats an effect of the sandbox, what is?
<added> - just seen Powdorks reply.
-Googebot on the site every day for lengthy periods of time
-site did migrate from DMOZ to Google Directory, but then Google directory reverted to earlier version
1 and 2 got me into the top 10 and 3 took me to #1
This is on a phrase that has 494,000 results, so not exactly a big phrase, but certainly not terribly obscure either. This site was first indexed in March.
For other sites, I am not getting sandboxed on MSNs new engine due out in January, and I have turned off most of my Google Adwords accounts, because I believe I will get nearly as much in traffic for free from MSN than I will from Google for money.
I am even thinking about advertising MSNs new search on some of my sites, so long as the Google sandbox continues to affect me, because I feel I have created some very worthwhile sites, without doing any black hat tricks, and I want users to be encouraged to use MSN in addition to Google, because they both have value to the searcher.
I thought it might be because my new domain didn't have DMOZ entries but reading above I can see that this isn't that likely. I still have 2 old domains I haven't done much with so I can introduce 2 new sites with them. The other thing is that geocities.com has been around a long time and a free site there shouldn't get any sandboxed affect (depends on the area you work in as to whether this is acceptable).
Are your search terms very competitive Scoreman?
I just gave up and put the most important set of pages on one of my older sites (same theme but a different angle) and whoooosh from #100+ to #1 on most of the pages moved.That says a lot. Mine is the opposite story. I moved a subdirectory from an old domain to a new one. The pages had many #1 positions while on the old domain. They have been on the new domain for six months now. I have added more links since the move than were there before the move and all the old links should follow the 301s.
Content is king? No, on Google content means zero.
Some interesting things about it...
It's a blog (industry specific)
The site doesn't have its own domain name; it's just under a folder on my typepad account.
It has tons of outgoing links
I post 2-3 times a week
Other than submitting to Yahoo (accepted almost instantly) and the DMOZ (thus far ignored), I've never hunted for links (I recently got a freebie link from a blog off a PR 8 site though).
It went from PR 0 to 5 in the last update
It's already making $10-15 day
Considering the other sites that I've been promoting hardcore have been buried in the sand (and haven't gotten--IMO--the PR they deserve), I'm considering taking a page from the above book and just buying my way into the Yahoo Directory and forgetting about link exchanges.
I see GoogleGuy comments posted on some fluff Google threads. Clearly he reads everything. It'd be nice to have some sort of statement from Google regarding this topic. If nothing else an actual reason (other than forcing the use of AdWords) for the existence of this Sandbox effect.
