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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
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."
It seems to make some sense though. For one thing, by adding a delay for new sites & external links, they are putting a real cost on being banned for spamming. In the past, spammers could bounce right back with a new domain with fresh links.
...by adding a delay for new sites & external links, they are putting a real cost on being banned for spamming. In the past, spammers could bounce right back with a new domain with fresh links.
Talk about 'throwing out the baby with the bath water'! :)
With MSN beta very close to going live (according to the other thread, it has been slowly rolling out since Dec. 1), hopefully Google will finally be forced to release their expanded index (which I believe they have already ready to go) as I believe they will use it to overshadow MSN's new search engine in the news.
hopefully Google will finally be forced to release their expanded index (which I believe they have already ready to go) for the main purpose of overshadowing MSN's new search engine in the press.
HaHaHa - Nice one airpal...
Yes, I'm sure they will have something ready to fire. If your suggestion does come to fruition, however, Google will loose a lot of support and respect by everyone from searchers to website owners.
Spammers, being at the cutting edge of SEO, would go out and buy 500 domains/sites that are over a year old, to play with.
Most likely what Google are doing is sandboxing external links, rather than just the domains. So unless said spammer has somehow picked up a load of well-aged on-topic links for his 500 standby domains, he is out of luck.
Thats my theory anyway. Has anyone had luck with taking an existing parked domain, giving it fresh links, and having it rank for competitive keywords?
If your suggestion does come to fruition, however, Google will loose a lot of support and respect by everyone from searchers to website owners.
They've already lost a lot of respect, the only webmasters that respect them now are the people making big $$ from their old sites/rankings, which I can't argue with.
However, there were spam sites 1, 2, 3, and 4 years ago, and they didn't pull the plug on all new sites then... Which is all the more reason, I feel they probably have a coding/hardware issue they're working to fix or have fixed. But they're taking their sweet time and keeping it under wraps because they don't want to affect their stock price by announcing "we forgot to mention that shortly after the IPO, we realized that we had to rewrite most of our code, and upgrade all our hardware to be able to handle a much larger index size than we had planned for when the company first started." With most investors aware of a new MSN engine about to come out and how nobody likes to bet against Microsoft when they enter a market, that would be a disaster for the GOOG holders. Cmon, Eric Schmidt, hurry up and cash in your 147 mill so you can get back to improving your engine...
Has anyone had luck with taking an existing parked domain, giving it fresh links, and having it rank for competitive keywords?
I used an existing parked domain (years old but never used), gave it fesh links, and added 2000 pages of unique content. (The site has twice as many quality incoming links as any competitor and 4-5 times the content of the next bigest competitor and is conservatively SEOed)
I am in the Google sandbox! You should see the SERPS in MSN Beta!
I would have the majority of my links on theme.
As even if this isnt an issue now it will be in the future.
The only offtopic links I have are to my sites .
I think it would be easy to devalue offtopic links.
I think some sites will get wiped when that happens.
It seems to make some sense though. For one thing, by adding a delay for new sites & external links, they are putting a real cost on being banned for spamming. In the past, spammers could bounce right back with a new domain with fresh links.
We are not talking spammers here, we are talking everyone and everything (effectively.)
They've already lost a lot of respect, the only webmasters that respect them now are the people making big $$ from their old sites/rankings, which I can't argue with.
Google is not in the business of winning the respect of Webmasters. I would guess that this is the last thing that concerns them in their mission to "Organise the World's Information." :(
We all know about the power of advertising. As an example, if M$ want to go for this they could spend the advertising money to turn it round, not necessarily to take over but to make a big impression. Then, when people start MSN'ing as opposed to Googling, who knows?
If your only source of income is free traffic, you had better start learning the world of paid advertising real quick.
Very true. However, in many cases, and for one of my sites being effected by the current Google wierdness in particular, that money would probably be better spent on old fashioned print advertising. Adwords is too flaky and inconsistent and Overture, though better, isn't that much better. At least when you do a print media buy, you know exactaly what you're getting and how much it will cost. Online advertising is a drain as you have to check every hour to make sure that you haven't been bumped.
At least when you do a print media buy, you know exactaly what you're getting and how much it will cost.
Tell that to advertisers who paid for phantom circulation in newspapers like NEWSDAY and the CHICAGO SUN-TIMES. :-)
For more on this, see Jack Shafer's "Ghost Readers:
Is everybody in the newspaper business inflating circulation?" article in SLATE at:
[slate.msn.com...]
Google has established its position in the world of SE's ,it will take years and lots of marketing effort from MS$ to convince the end user to use there machine. As about those beta results and relevant its only fools and horses.
3 things:
1. I agree that Google is simply dominating all competitors at this point.
2. Microsoft has (I'm guessing) 80%+ market share in the Operating System industry? If they integrate search as a major/easily accessible feature in Longhorn, and if its half decent, its game over.
3. I never bet against Bill Gates.
Tell that to advertisers who paid for phantom circulation in newspapers like NEWSDAY and the CHICAGO SUN-TIMES. :-)
True, there are abuses and it's also well known that they also inflate circulation by continuing to send out publications after cancelations, but at least there is some regulation and oversight... and these abuses aren't really the rule. Watch what happens to the career of those responsible. With some 2/3 of rev coming from ads, they've really hurt their rags credibility for a long time.
Adwords? Competators can click through expensive links and they don't work anywhere near as well as natural listings. I don't think they work as well vis a vis a targeted ad in a business mag in our case.
...sandbox? Off topic... sorry.
Our major site has been sandboxed since Sept. 23rd... has anyone yet make a comback? What is the record for time spent in the box?
I must have missed that one.
What I see is failure, folding to the pressures, trying to adjust problematic components to achieve higher income, currently successfully, but that's a strategy that depends on the earlier success and surfing patterns engendered by that success. Plus the current lack of meaningful competition.
Oddly, there are easy to find precedents for this type of behavior, when MS has had serious competition, it has put out very good products, when competition was destroyed, innovation slowed, and in some cases, like IE, stopped altogether.
If a search engine can't deal with the web it won't last. The web is a fluid, ever changing medium, not a collection of old established sites.
Altavista failed for the same type reason. Making excuses for a company's failure is an odd approach to take with SEO work, but each to their own I guess.
Anyway, you can rest assured that MSN does not share your beliefs that the web can be searched and served to users only by applying a massive block to new material and sites. Killing spam has to be done differently long term, and the company that figures that out while maintaining freshness will win.
My theory why google has not updated is :
Msn will be releasing there search engine in the next couple of months.
Msn is constanly tweaking its algorithym daily, this is pretty obvious to any one repeating searches on msn beta. I think msn is checking there results against googles results trying to at least be on par with google.
Google is the gold standard and it would only make sense that in order to compete the search results would have to be as good as googles.
I think google knows this and will wait for msn to launch its new search results(on par with googles current stale index). Msn will have all kinds of press about how great the results are and how it is a good alternative to google.
And then whamo google releases the database of updated serps it has been perfecting for nine months,
less spam , more relevent, more content etc.
It then has independent companies compare google results with msn results, release the comparisons and
google wins the upcoming pr war.
This is just my thoery though. It could happen differently lol
Google is the standard, they have a pretty large index relative to everyone else. When MSN and Yahoo can get their index near Google's size they will have the same challenges. It's one thing to hold 2 billion pages, it's quite another to store 8 billion.
My site is probably sitting in a sandbox but it is in a pretty competitive area. Why should Google think my website is any better than those that have been around for years? Most of the "money" term questions have been answered thousands of times.
I have spent many hours writing content, sure I hope it pays off. Until then, I just keep writing - 6 pages a day - 400 - 800 words a page, every day, after my regular job is over.
I have to admit that my typing accuracy and speed is greatly improved!
Anyway, you can rest assured that MSN does not share your beliefs that the web can be searched and served to users only by applying a massive block to new material and sites. Killing spam has to be done differently long term, and the company that figures that out while maintaining freshness will win.
Correct! And spam will never be killed by relying on algorithms. Algorithms will always be beaten eventually. To kill spam will require manual intervention on a large scale but the web would be far better for this. All it takes for the search engines to announce that they are going after spam, roughly define it, ask people to report it then nuke it.
Dead easy and for the benefit of all concerned.
1) 75% content scraped affiliates with duplicate content
2) 5% doorways to existing sites
3) 10% rehashed content with little value
4) 9% bizarre ramblings
5) 1% fresh and original
Look at these threads.... 'I have launched 10 new sites and they are nowhere...' I bet most of these posters are not doing sites for new business's but are generating sites on topics they no little about and trying to make a fast buck.
99% new sites are probably worthless. It is better to organise and filter existing sites before you add 99% more rubbish.
If google continue to weed out the existing rubbish, which takes time, and continue to wait for new sites to pass some strict tests, like decent links in, then this seems a very sensible startegy.
Joe public dosen't notice if a site is fresh or not. Look at the search terms they use. Search terms are so basic and simplistic that you don't need a new site to satisfy them, an old site that has passed all the tests is just as good.
When joe public uses a search engine it is because they don't know any sites about the topic, so how can they care if the site is old or new! Existing sites cover news stories so the spectrum is covered. Obscure searches can pull up new sites, so thats that done. Game over.
Joe public does not need new sites, because to them old sites ARE new.
If old sites were not valuable then why do people 'bookmark' and return to a site over and over again? You have to look at the profile of a search engine user, they are generally NEW to a topic so all results are 'fresh' to them. Those people researching a topic in depth will use more sophisticated search terms and newer or specialist sites will rank for those.
The point is, and will remain, that Google has developed a serious incompetency.
Archive.org already has the job of old site repository.
And the notion of 'game over' -- what are you saying? ... that there's no new knowledge to be had out there?
Do pre-Sandbox sites represent some kind of final, resting, informational nirvana only equalled by the Renaissance?
Perhaps when all text ever written is available online we'll be a little closer to the web being a "full" resource.
In any case, I'd guess that the sandbox (assuming that it exists) is merely a temporary bandaid that Google has applied while developing longer-term solutions to the problem of boilerplate affiliate pages, "made for AdSense" scraper sites, and other clutter that makes it harder for Google to fulfill its stated corporate mission of organizing the Web's information and making it universally accessible and useful.
I'm just going by what people say here. Nearly all are complaining about affiliate/scraper sites and spam dominating in the current index. Therefore, unless some miracle has occured, most of all new sites are equally proportioned with affiliate/scraper spam.
Seo caused the need for the sandbox. We are all to blame for the problems we have now, it is not googles fault but our own. We have shared ideas and tactics on how to get our sites top, with a greed and arrogance that our sites are best.
The top positions should be gained through fair democracy (honest links) and not insider knowledge.
"..that there's no new knowledge to be had out there?"
Yes, new knowledge is rare and any new knowledge can be served by qualified sites already listed.
