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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
There can be 10 searches for a term in a given period, but if everyone clicks on a certain site it has a CTR of 100%. On the other hand there can be millions of searches on a keyword in a given period, but if only 1 in 10 people click on a specific site, it will have a CTR of 10%.
BTW, did the event coincide with any change (even minor one as you may put it) you may have done with the site, or IBLs?
Happy Holidays
Mc
No, no change, I deliberately have avoided tweaking stuff too much since putting the site into the sandbox, also deliberately. I wanted to see how the sandbox works, now I have a pretty good idea. It's predictable by the way, which if there were no sandbox would not be the case. All behaviors fit what I thought, including this last lingering group of pages that are still being sandboxed - how do I know? because the site is now top 20 for keyword phrase, but the page returned is actually not the main page for that keyword phrase, only if the actual keyword phrase page is still in the sandbox, ie, its flag is still true, would I get this secondary page for that keyword phrase, no search engine, including google, has ever confused these pages, mainly because there are authority ibls to that main page, the one still in the sandbox.
Regarding the new 3 week old sites, sounds like the google new site boost, check on those next week, or the week after and see how they are doing. It's always possible too that Google fixes its algo, creates a real full one index version of the web, and whatever else it needs to do, then the sandbox and related events will go away without any fanfare, these forums will remain the best place to see if and when that's happened.
How about links to the site? No new links and no links removed? How about changes in links to the sites linking to the site?
mykel79, thanks for pointing that out to me, I guess I misunderstood what fclark was saying. And if that is true, I am at a loss for words to explain why this site didn't get sandboxed.
However, I have another site that is deeply sandboxed, and here's what I'm going to do to attempt to get it out.
On some pages, I realized I had more affliate links then I did text, most were search boxes and the links were alot of script, and all were 302 redirects. I removed them all. I think they are weighing down the pages.
I ran a link checker, and fixed all the broken links that I didn't know it had.
I refreshed and reuploaded my original index.htm that I was using before it got sandboxed, where all the links to the internal pages are on the index page.
I added some more interlinking between my pages, and a couple outbounds to some authority sites.
I know they are saying don't touch your sites during this time, but I just feel maybe I can pull it back up, and the reason it's sandboxed is the result of something I recently did. I'll let you know in 48 hrs if anything has happened.
Slow organic link development [very slow, since the site was in the sandbox, it was hard to find using google]. The target search terms jumped about 200 positions overnight. Exactly as expected if there were a flag of some sort that expires. And exactly what I expected to happen since it's fairly clear that such a filter exists and is being used.
Currently more than 50% of my traffic is coming from yahoo/msn. Which is a very big change, the site has the kind of stuff that people used to always use google to find, I never had any significant yahoo traffic before, even though I ranked well for target keywords, geek type stuff.
This suggests to me that more sophisticated users are in fact switching, or have switched, to yahoo/msn in numbers that are becoming significant. Exactly as I would have expected to happen, Google's results are becoming erratic, way too many algo tweaks in way too short a time, the google I was a fan of could be counted on as a bookmark, now my bookmarks in my browser are massive since I can no longer count on consistent google results, especially for technical searches, where I often can't even find what I'm looking for and have to use Yahoo.
When you are looking for an answer to a problem, the age of the site is irrelevant, often there are only a few sites that have those answers, some may be old, some may be new. Playing around with this fact is a very bad strategy for Google to be following. But I don't think they have a choice in this question, this is being forced on them by external constraints, it's not something you would do deliberately. You lower the quality and freshness not because you want to, but because something is making you do that.
This suggests to me that more sophisticated users are in fact switching, or have switched, to yahoo/msn in numbers that are becoming significant.
Based on the the most common search terms with which people are finding my blog I would certainly say that most are NOT sophisticated, but nevertheless I certainly see no evidence that people are turning away from Google.
I personally use Google as my main search engine, rarely using Yahoo and never using MSN. And I'm as sophisticated as users get.
Looking at the referrals for my blog this month, I have 12,000+ from Google, 2500+ from Yahoo and 1200+ from MSN.
And now for an example of a site that is sandboxed by Google, but Yahoo is ranking.:
- Yahoo 15,007
- MSN 7,913
- Google 1,688
- Ask Jeeves 525
Though Google contributes an enormous number of visitors to a majority of my sites, I am learning to cope without Google for newer sites. ;)
