Sandboxed Sites - Back Together?

Do they come out together or one by one?

[McMohan]

Most of the new sites that I work with are still in the sandbox. Was just curios to know, if all the sanboxed sites come out of the sandbox during one fine major updation or one by one, over the rolling updates?

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

[airpal]

Powdork, after reading your post, the million dollar question becomes:

If you add a new page to an old site (+2 years old), and get hundreds of inbound links (from external sites) to it (for a competitive search term), this new page would not rank well at all for many months because the incoming links have not aged yet, right?

This can only be proved or disproved by real-life results that people have had doing this recently. Anybody experience this problem with a new page on their old site?

[Powdork]

Actually, the post doesn't reflect my true beliefs. Personally, i think they are full. There is plenty of anecdotal evidence that new pages on mature domains can rank very quickly and very competitively. This doesn't really disprove either theory since the link aging theory typically states that internal links are counted to their full extent immediately.

[RoySpencer]

So far, I'll admit to believing in the "sandbox" penalty...tens of thousands of our pages that ranked #1-#30 or so, are now ranked #200-1000, or beyond. Page rank has been largely retained after the domain name change.

Explain to me how the following can be explained by anything else than the SB theory (I really am open to suggestions):

If I move a page from our domain with the new (possibly penalized) name to an older subdomain, it shoots up to #3 position and stays there. The PR of the linking pages are the same (PR6 index page => PR5 subpage => page in question). All outgoing links on the page were kept the same.

The only difference I can see is the newer versus older domain.

Oh, and DerekH, I'll see your M.S. and raise you a Ph.D. ;)

[bak70]

Well i think its not ok to post specific searches so I cant prove what I have written.
But I can tell you this.
What Im doing has worked in the past and it works now.
I recently went after a new keword for an older site and within 3 months im on page 2 for the keyword.
(it is a very competetive term), After the next update it will be on page one.

I also started a brand new site and it should be either 1 rst or second page after the next update.
(Its already first page on the msn beta)

I feel the reason why some people do better in Msn is that it is updating more frequently than google right now.
I havent seen a change in the way google updates in about 2 years. Pretty much every three months.

Again some people might not notice these updates because popular terms are dominated by people who just do seo better. This results in the serps looking the same.
I have all kinds of sites so I see these smaller changes when they happen.

As far as restaurants not showing for there specific search.
It will take a few updates but if the site has some incoming links it will show up.

There was a very popular diet pill that didnt show up in the top ten for its name for almost a year.

I took a look at it and noticed the site had little seo work on it.

So it took a while.

[bak70]

Powdork
What kind of shock.
Im hoping for an update in the next few days.
It happened last year the year before in november.

[webmasterworld.com...]

[Powdork]

I was just referring to the fact that if you felt major updates in the last 9 months than you would find something like Florida or the cross linking update of Nov 2002 to be rather traumatic. In my opinion Brandy/Austin was the last major update and that seemed to be a lessening of the filters applied during Florida. And 'if' the sandbox is a capacity issue and they fix it and then apply a new algo at the same time, it could make Florida look mild.

I took a look at it and noticed the site had little seo work on it.

Thats what makes me think the sandbox is not an effort to reduce spam. These are not all spammy sites being caught up. They are sites with little or no seo, sites with quality seo, sites that are spammy. Their common denominator is that they are new. That and the fact that they don't show up for a unique company name.

[bak70]

From what Ive seen
sites that a lot of real seo move every three months.
Isnt it possable that the majority of people out there
just dont know real seo anymore?
Think about it if everyone could do it it wouldnt be profitable.
If I built a new site and did everything I used to do
and the site didnt move for 9 months.
I wouldnt come on here and say there must be a sand box or a penalty.
I would say uh oh I need to learn the newest technique or Im done making money with websites.

Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.

[Powdork]

Think about it if everyone could do it it wouldnt be profitable.

Anyone can do it, just not with new domains.

I would say uh oh I need to learn the newest technique or Im done making money with websites.

I'm not interested in the newest technique, just the development of quality content. I want this to be for the long run. I have a hard time believing Google wants to reward the newest technique either.

[bak70]

powdork

You took it the wrong way.
For me the old techniques still work fine as they have been since I started 3 years ago.

But if what I was doing stopped working than I would look for what the new seo criteria for google is.

You cant make a blanket statement that new domains dont rank well.
(well you can but its your opinion)
New domains in highly competetive areas might not rank well. It just makes sense that it would take longer to rank in a highly competetive area.

But I bet i could get top ten listins all day long for obscure keywords with a brand new domain.

like ny widget dealer
or long island lawn care specialist
lol

[Namaste]

As we progress on this thread, I have been running all kinds of searches on Google. More & more it does appear that Google has listed sites under keyword categories. My conclusion is drawn from 2 observations:
1. Pages of sites are ranking well when selected keywords are in use. One example, a leading gourmet foods website is ranking well whenever the words "gourmet" or "food" or "gifts" or "baskets" are being used. This same site recently added pages for exotic plants, which have a PR of 5, but these pages are nowhere in the SERPS.

2. Google is making use of a Thesaraus like function to display results. This happens when it is unable to find good results under the string typed in. For example(not actual), Indigo Widgets SLC returns results for Blue Widgets Salt Lake City. This indicates a category like classification.

Some conclusions can be drawn from this and other observations:
- There is some kind of "sandbox"
- The sandbox exists at one of the algo layers of Google
- The sandbox is most visible with new sites, but is also visible when adding new pages to a website of "unrelated" keywords
- How to overcome this sandbox is not really known. It seems that the "sandbox" is cumpolsary for most sites (possibly leading sites or newspaper sites are exempt)

What Google dosen't realise in all it's wisdom is that this isn't going to deter SEO. Sure, it causes a strategic shift in the way we SEO, but dosen't stop it. I see action shifting to acquiring of domains categorised under required keywords; and also formation of alliances between websites who rank under desired keywords.

It does appear to a be a negative and undesired step by Google; who is appearing to be more & more overzealous about their overrated threat: seo.

[dvduval]

This is about the 20th thread about the sandbox with 100 or more posts. Cleary, webmasters are not happy about it, and clearly Google is not commenting about it. This can only hurt Google in the long run.

[hdpt00]

This is about the 20th thread about the sandbox with 100 or more posts. Cleary, webmasters are not happy about it, and clearly Google is not commenting about it. This can only hurt Google in the long run.

That pretty much sums it up.

[HayMeadows]

If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

[Vec_One]

Google's mission is to organize the world's information and make it universally inaccessible.

[prairie]

To me it just seems like links are taking longer to have effect. Really old links from DMOZ and Yahoo are gold.