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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
Google assigns PageRank according to backlinks, and each backlink is weighted according to its own PageRank. So far, so good. But what if Google, with all the data it has collected over the years, decided to plot a "natural growth in PageRank" curve for a typical, non-spammy web page? And what if they determined that spammy sites tended to exceed this natural growth pattern?
Then they could assign real PageRank (as opposed to the toolbar PageRank) only up to the point where the backlinks do not exceed this growth rate. New pages would tend to exceed this threshold if they are link-optimized; i.e., they're growing backlinks at an "unnatural" rate. Old pages, which first appeared in Google's index many months ago, might not have this problem because the threshold is determined by calculating the average over time for that page.
It would not be that much trouble for Google to save real PageRank calculations for each page they index, and build up a history for that page. GoogleGuy, on another forum, has admitted that they have internal access to all the backlinks for every page at the Googleplex, even though they choose not to show them all with the "link:" command.
It's a no-brainer to do something like this if you're serious about spam. It would be a lot more elegant than what they did one year ago with the Florida filter. The problem with Florida was that they tried to do an instant fix by suddenly plopping in a real-time filter. It didn't work well because by then the entire PageRank infrastructure behind it was already corrupted by spammers.
What I don't understand is why blogs continue to break all the rules and rank so well. Maybe they are handled separately in some sort of "freshness" equation. This might be more acceptable if those blog pages would fade in rank a lot more quickly once they appear so prominently. But the blog advantage for a typical blog page seems to go on for months or more at Google.
Imagine it's the year 2003 and you're a search engine. Imagine you want to go public next year. Imagine your algo is mainly based on link popularity but your serps are swamped by link factory spam. What do you do? You delay the effect of links.
... but only for new sites?
Why allow the existing spammers to merrily continue generating spammy new pages?
Why allow the existing spammers to merrily continue generating spammy new pages?
Existing spammers were filtered by the C-class IP address penalty or were sorted out manually, I suppose. The typical spammer built a network of sites on generic domain names, cross-linked them like crazy, enjoyed the traffic as long as possible, got caught, was penalized, moved on and started from scratch somewhere else.
I just released a new site (first in about 6 months). Pretty much expected it to do nothing for a few months based on the "sandbox" theory. Now within 2 weeks 55,000+ pages are fully indexed and ranking well in Google. The search terms are "deep" so that may explain ranking well. The domain is a new domain registered about 4 months ago. The site is pulling significant traffic (for new site).
I pretty much assumed with the latest index update anouncement they were letting just about anything in to get the numbers up.
Our experience is that new pages on existing sites do not exhibit the so-called sandbox behavior.
Existing spammers were filtered by the C-class IP address penalty or were sorted out manually, I suppose. The typical spammer built a network of sites on generic domain names, cross-linked them like crazy, enjoyed the traffic as long as possible, got caught, was penalized, moved on and started from scratch somewhere else.
I was not just talking about spammers. Any legit site, (like my main site), can add new pages and get them ranked within a few days. You can see that from the posts above and I am working on another new page right now.
Sorry but I just cannot subscribe to any suggestion that this lag is deliberate. It makes no sense at all to ban all new sites from the SERPs. Had this been a spam prevention measure some comment from Google would have leaked out by now. Believe me, we'll only start to find out what's going when the press get a hold of it.
This is not a fact. Try to create a new page to rank for a search term where you already have a page ranking decently. It is difficult to get a new page to outrank a more mature page, even if the new page obviously should, like a page about Portland being outranked by an Oregon page for a "Portland" search, where the new page has more accurate/better anchor text, etc.
I almost see the battle between conservatism and progressivism on Google! But one someone will come along and say out with the old and in with the new! Google is now longer the New New, and the sandbox just further enhances this notion.
If it is not a root page, then flag it and defer the ranking until the root page for that domain has been ranked. After the root page is ranked, give the new page a PageRank of root page minus one or two.
If the root page itself has never had a PageRank before, start it out with a "new root page" PageRank that seems reasonable, but is independent of its backlinks. The next time around it won't be new, and can start growing its "natural" PageRank if it has sufficient backlinks.
This isn't so exotic. In the old days Google used to assign a PageRank of root minus one (according to the toolbar) for every directory deep where a new page was found on an old domain. That would work between updates. Then at the next monthly update it would acquire a more accurate PageRank.
If you search for the sites using various commands like allintitle, ect. there they are looking perfect and right near the top; Title just right, snippet right on the money, fresh tag from two days a go. Everything is exactly as it should be except they just can’t get anywhere for the key words you are optimizing for. (I don’t know the definition of “competitive” but our sites are chasing terms that produce results from 3 to 8 million)
Now I know there are pundits on this board who say there is no way around this thing because it doesn’t exist in the first place. And there are other wise men who say they can get out of it with a little extra hard work and smarts. All that may be true, and my hats off to you, but it doesn’t change the fact that an awful lot of people have launched sites eight months ago, in the same fashion they always have, that don’t even show on the radar screen for terms they were designed for.
It is absolutely the most bizarre thing we have encountered in this business. The real problem with it is what do you even say about it? “gee whiz, we don’t rank for this competitive key word as well as we should, darn engine must be broken, can’t be our fault”. Or how about, “sorry sir, but your site is due to break the first 1,000 places hopefully in about 10 months, uh, we think”. Other than the kind people on this board allowing sandbox sufferes like ourselves to rant a little, theres no one to share this little problem at work with; “Hey hows everything at work?” “Uh great, except for this thing they call the sandbox, its, uh,, well its.. oh never mind, everythings great, and you?”
I am a fan of Google; always have been and probably always will be. We have done well in this business and Google has been a big part of that so no bashing here. The thing that’s really beginning to bother me is a growing fear that when we find out what is causing this thing, its going to be something so incredibly obvious, we just won’t ever get over the fact we couldn’t figure it out.
talking of commercial websites...
The question that Google would have asked to itself is "why would someone (online/offline) build more the one website for the SAME Business?"
Answer- Just to play with SEO and acquire top of positions with variety of websites in portfolio attacking the variety of KWS.
Counter Action - The Genuine SINGLE Biz - Single Website owners would also not be encouraged for few months (along with build-new-website-crazy-webmasters)to see if both of the groups start getting used to Adwords.
Result - Still to come
If it were something like the search engine is broken, then why would they double the size of their index?
Since no Google rep will make a statement about it tells us a lot:
1) It must exist, because if it didn't, they could easily tell us.
2) The reason for its existence is not something they want to tell the public, because we would likely not like the answer.
Meanwhile, other engines are working on beating Google, and working on their image among webmasters. 2005 is going to be very interesting.
