Forum Moderators: open
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
BeeDeeDubbleU takes some beating :)
Here's a few options:
1) Buy an older domain - show everyone that you too are also smarter than the Google algo
2) Continue to do link development for around 6 months.
Seeing as how this thread has lasted for nearly 6 months, many posters here should soon see their websites ranking high.
The sandbox effect can not stop motivated webmasters from earning money.
It can!
Google built market share by providing free listings which gave them content. Those older sites that helped google become what it is today are now being rewarded by remaining in the index and ranking well. Thank you Google. I don't want to be ditched by some new site that just claims to be 'usefull' by some self opinionated webmaster whose new site is not as original or good as he thinks it is anyway."My new site is really good... blah blah..." Tough. You weren't there a few years ago developing your site, investing in new technology and making the internet more popular everyday. New sites have no right to knock established sites off the top serps. Older sites are just as good as any other site.
Sandbox is the best thing, whether by accident or design. Long may it continue, it helps the webmasters who put all the pioneering work into the net and helped make google. Why should some newbie webmaster/site wipe these guys off the top positions? They don't deserve it.
You want to beat sandbox... then pay for some traffic. You might want to try those 'spammy directories'.... lets face it guys, they whipped your arse, despite your whinging.
That type of thinking is just ridiculous and if it was acceptable, we wouldn't even be having this discussion because the computer would not exist.
I bet the last guy that made buggy whips felt that they automobile had no place in society because they didn't offer people anything new or innovative.
Seeing as how this thread has lasted for nearly 6 months, many posters here should soon see their websites ranking high.
I don't think 6 months is a magically number. Many people are reporting sites as old as last February still being sandboxed. There are many people that call this the march filter instead of the sandbox because that is when they felt it kicked in. Being that it is now December, that was 10 months ago.
Another interesting thing is that the sandbox effect may be the thing that triggers a class action lawsuit not because google owes us anything but because it owes its shareholders a responsibility to disclose material items that may effect it's business and stock price. Whether it is intentional or unintentional, it does effect the search results google serves up and therefore because search is googles business, failure to disclose this information to shareholders and potential investors whose interests may be affected by it could be seen a perpetrating a fraud.
I applaud Google for bringing stability for older sites, who can then develop better content with a more secure future. New sites?... tough, you missed the boat.
Yawn.
I've been earning my living full time online for over 5 years now, and even I'm not that "full of myself" as to the value of some of my older sites. Sure, they enjoy nice, stable rankings, but I don;t consider them the end al, be all, nor do I think they could not be surpassed as a subject matter expert site in their respective fields by newer sites.
Telling people they've "missed the boat" is simply a vain attempt to try to cut down on competition. NO one has missed the boat. The internet is in it's infancy, and there will be plenty of competition for google in the coming years (or do you think MS practically eliminating Netscape was a fluke?).
EVENTUALLY, google will HAVE to begin properly indexing and ranking new sites, or THEY WILL be called to task by the public. If and when a "rumor" of "staleness" starts being entertained by the press, just watch how fast google makes the neccessary changes (if they haven't begun to already) to their hardware/software to properly index AND rank the whole web, not just bits and pieces that "made it in" before they ran out of space, or encountered software limitations, or whatever the hell the problem is.
Missed the boat...what a load of crap. Yeah, that's right folks...google will be the only dominate marketing channel online until the end of time. Just give up now....
Hence, the index is not stale.
It all comes back, time and again through these threads to asking, “why are they doing this?” These guys have so much money at their disposal there is no software or hardware problem they can’t fix. If something is broken and they want to fix it they can. The stakes are enormous; no way would they risk rocking their worlds by hiding, or covering up a mechanical problem. They would wip the plex into a frenzy, burn the midnight oil, get out the check book and get it right.
I just don’t understand it. I keep thinking something really obvious will appear and we will feel really stupid, but we have sites stuck in this thing since March.
New pages are being added all the time.
Hence, the index is not stale.
Google is masking virtually all new sites that have been uploaded since February. They are just not being featured hence the index IS stale. All my new pages on my older sites have been indexed but I do not consider that this lets them off the hook. Stale is stale is stale.
Telling people they've "missed the boat" is simply a vain attempt to try to cut down on competition. NO one has missed the boat. The internet is in it's infancy, and there will be plenty of competition for google in the coming years (or do you think MS practically eliminating Netscape was a fluke?).
How true.
Yawn. Heard that said over and over for years. Google has announced better than expected 3rd quarter earnings earlier this month and since August the share price has doubled. Sandbox has been around since the beginning of the year, so it doesn't seem to be doing any harm.
P.S. I must get back and re read my sites, they are so interesting..... they really deserve to be well ranked. Google has got it absolutely right. :)
My message 305 "There is stuff going on that will change the internet dramatically over the next 5 years, and you all can benefit from the priviliged position you are in. We all dream of being present when a golden opportunity arises.... well wake up, it is happening."
Move on guys, sandbox is sandbox, the boat has left the harbour, find another boat.
You might not find it so easy to be smug.
Move on guys, sandbox is sandbox, the boat has left the harbour, find another boat.
Don't get too comfortable. If Google were to "freeze" their index to keep out spam, then basically they would be giving up on their stated mission - to index the worlds information.
The purpose of a sandbox can only be one thing - to reduce the prevalence of fly-by-night throw-away domains and link schemes used by so many spammers. But those with quality sites to offer will be willing to wait it out. Once the initial sandbox "time lag" has expired, there will be a continual stream of quality new sites ranking in the serps as each one escapes the sandbox. Enjoy your "stability" while it lasts - your lack of new competition probably won't last long.
elgrande - Guess MHes has said that with a pinch of salt. Read him the opposite :)
ahhh *hungover*. Tequila IS a good fighting drink.
. . . but he sounded exactly like those other cold, calculating MBAs I went to school with (and which, coincidentally, are running Google).
If it is intentional, the sandbox will continue until it hurts Google financially more than it helps them. That is now Google management's responsibility to its shareholders. So, as long as it increases adwords revenue and people aren't leaving Google in droves, expect it to continue. Trust me, there is someone crunching the numbers in his or her financial model right now.
... don't take me too seriously. I worked out the other day that absolutely everything I have done this year has had no effect what so ever! Not a single new site is doing well, and the only redeming fact is niether have my competitors done anything. I could have been on holiday all year and still be in the same position. We have about 5 sites that rock, we never touch them incase we ruin them!
The truth about sandbox is there is nothing you can do. People who say otherwise have found a niche phrase with which they got lucky. But we are talking about having a site ranking for hundreds of phrases in the top 10 and pulling 10,000+ people per day. That just does not happen now.
The only thing you can do is make a good site and wait. When the natural links start happenning, things will look up. However, google is like a 4 barrell lock. You have to have all 4 elements in place to open it. If you miss one, your not in.
1) Natural links
2) optimised pages
3) pr flow
4) Original and quality content
Natural links take a long time, you can't fake it. The spammy sites are still hanging in there but without attracting new links then others will catch up and slowly replace them. As I said before, google is playing a long game, they are not going to replace spam with newer spam. Buying old domains may get you past the sandbox, but you still need quality links in to rank well. In 5 years time google will have an index with only older sites in the top positions and these will all have high quality natural links. You can't rank every site in the top ten, so just rank proven quality.
Google is based on links which are votes. It needs to isolate the real votes from the link exchanges etc. A real vote is one from a quality site that also has real votes and can be trusted. The process of evaluating all this takes a long time and if google is going to do it, now is the time.
No new site can be trusted, thats the long and short of it. It has to earn its position with real votes that are evaluated over a long time. Google was obsessed with 'freshness' and they got stung. I reckon they have decided that google news and froogle reduces the need for them to list new sites right away. The option of adwords is there, the rest of the index is for proven quality only.
Its a pain but quality will win through in the end. Meanwhile, spam the hell out of other engines, they haven't been so bold. :)
The purpose of a sandbox can only be one thing - to reduce the prevalence of fly-by-night throw-away domains and link schemes used by so many spammers. But those with quality sites to offer will be willing to wait it out.
Exactly!
I do not understand the continued capacity argument.
Just because you make a website does not by default mean you get high rankings in Google.
All anyone is saying is "despite my attempts to manipulate Google using methods that work with my old domains" I can't get anywhere because of the "sandbox".
Do most people normally rank in the top 10 for highly competitive phrases within a month. I think not.
If Google is fighting SERP spam by not ranking any new sites for over 6 months, the spammers have won. With hundreds of PHDs/programmers on staff, something tells me they would be able to come up with a stronger response than... "lets not let any sites in the past half year or more rank for any keywords."
Do most people normally rank in the top 10 for highly competitive phrases within a month. I think not.
The waiting period is now up to 10 months for some. And there are a quite a few members on this forum which I know for a fact can destroy the competition for most keywords/phrases they go after. I feel sympathy for the older sites that are going to be blown out of the top SERPS when the new ultra-optimized sites are finally let through.
If Google wanted to totally destroy the "shock and awe" of the rollout of MSNs new search, the would remove the sandbox effect right after the MSN search is released.
Very good point, dvduval, and it would be exactly Google's M.O. to do that.
Nah, they'll resurrect pages that were active 4-5 years ago, put them in the supplementals and claim that they now have 16 billion pages.
This is G o o g l e's cache of [joellabasses.com...] as retrieved on Dec 31, 1969 23:59:59 GMT
I could swear that I brought this site online only four months ago, but apparently I have been at it for 35 years (and I'm still in the sandbox).
.....and who told you that the owners of those old sites they don't have already made ,published and indexed in G and many other SE's new ultra-optimized sites with tones of quality links high PR and just waiting in the "sandbox" patiently.
Their attitude of being happy for the side effect that the sandbox is, because they were lucky enough to escape it... tells me everything I need to know. Those who rank well now and are working to rank well in the future, would not mock new sites as having no value.
I still believe that the more competition in the serps for the particular keyword the longer it will take to get to page one.(i guess you could call this the sandbox)
I used to get to page one in three months.
Now that there is more competition for all keywords you start off deeper in the google index so it takes longer to get to the front.
Some of us should be happy we show up at all.
For mortgage there is 100 million pages in the index.
Google only shows 857 results.
If I built a mortgage site and showed up in the 857 pages I would think thats a pretty good start.
beating out 90 million other pages is not all that bad.
I wouldnt expect much movement without tons of seo over the course of years.
I know whenever i need info I always go at least a couple of thousand pages deep.
Not!
Allintitle: # 16 out of 422,000 results returned
Allinanchor: # 12 out of 20,200 results returned
Allintext: #18 out of 3,560,000 results returned
For the main key word searched, we are not in the top 1,000 out of 3,570,000 results returned.
The site has been up since March and has a PR of 4.
That’s the sandbox, and after almost 9 months its getting a little frustrating! The only theory we are working right now is there must be a certain amount of on theme links.
Anyone have thoughts pro or con on that? Minimum amount of on theme links or in the box you go?
