Has the Sandbox been Abandoned?

[phantombookman]

Sorry to start a new thread but felt it may warrant it.

I have been posting in favour of the Sandbox's existence and I have 2 sites firmly stuck in the sand!

However...
2 weeks ago I registered a brand new domain and started to build a new site. I knew it would be at least 6 months before anything happened but..

This morning it entered the index for the first time - straight on page one for a one word search (a town, granted only 194,000 matches) but none the less the last 2 sites still cannot achieve similar results after 6 months.

Also preliminary early pages ranking very well
The site has only one incoming link, no adsense, banners or anything, vanilla html etc.

Built as per my last 2 sites so clearly something has changed!
Regards and hope to all
Rod

[BeeDeeDubbleU]

Watch it disappear in a day or so. This is symptomatic of the sandbox IMHO.

[guitaristinus]

This is evidence that what you all call the "sandbox" does not exist.

[steve40]

hi rod

could you help us all and repost in 10 days if still ok with the site that does not appear to be sandboxed

thanks steve

[JudgeJeffries]

Typical..I launched a site a month ago and it did pretty well for two weeks then sank without trace. Well, to far down for me to be bothered looking!

[Atomic]

I've had one site lost to SERP's for 7 months before it suddenly appeared with a very nice ranking. Four other sites disappeared for only a couple of weeks and then worked their way swiftly to page one where they have remained for months. All sites were created within a couple months of each other but only one out five disappeared for months.

Shouldn't there be some consistency?

[mark1615]

Don't you all know? G is smarter then everyone - if they are doing it, it must right.

Seriously though, as professionals we have to deal with reality as it is. G is what it is right now and despite the fact that we have some excellent rankings right now, I think it subpar. I also would be interested to see what happens to rod in a week or two. Likewise, this is not a competitive term. We have new pages on new sites that rank for uncompetitive terms. We start to see what is called the sandbox effect (or sometimes G Lag) when there is competition of 500,000 or 1MM or more.

[mark1615]

One other thing - I hope you have it right Rod and are on to some success. Seriously. Happy Thanksgiving.

[Ledfish]

Because of the sandbox, aren't Googles results less than accurate, therefore not the most relavent and therefore somewhat stale?

Why would Google use something like the sandbox if the above is the case? Does that not then make them vulnerable to Yahoo and MSN?

Is it all a conspiracy type thing where we all conclude that it is to thwart spam, hinder SEO's, etc. while it really is a scheme to pump up advertising revenue by way of increased Adwords?

Sounds like a really stupid idea that is just waiting to backfire in a major major way.

[phantombookman]

Hi Guys
just to let you know the site is still OK, I take the point of course that it may disapppear.

The main reason for the post was that the other sites I built did not do anything like this, even remotely.
I even have #1 matches on internal pages, and I only have about 10 pages or so on the site so far.

I shall take Steve's excellent advice and monitor for 10 days...
fingers crossed
Rod

[phantombookman]

Hi Guys
just an update as requested/promised, been on the first page for over 2 weeks now (will be more comfortable after a month), currently sat at #3 for a return of 190K +

Whilst not the most competetive area, I have had previous sites sandboxed and returning similar searches on page 45 for 6 months!

If this continues then I believe I must have
a:beaten the filter or
b:G has abandoned it

Regards
Rod

[Hanu]

Rod, thank you for sharing this with us. Most people never bother to post unless they have a problem.

If this continues then I believe I must have
a:beaten the filter or
b:G has abandoned it

If b is the case, then G must have decided to keep in the sb what's already in there and only let brand new sites bypass it.

[phantombookman]

Hi Hanu
the B option is there as a caveat, I personally believe (for what it's worth) that I dodged the filter, however I cannot state it as a fact as only the people who write the algo could make such a definitive statement.

[BeeDeeDubbleU]

My experience with a new site is that there has been no change. If your site really did escape the sandbox I would guard it with my life. There is an answer in there that is worth a lot of money ;)

[brixton]

i dont know guys but my 6 months old site has slowly start to come up in the top 100 results (competitive money terms)in some cases top 20.

[rj87uk]

Has the Google Guy said anything about it?

so many questions... but so much sand...

[steve40]

thanks phantombookman
for taking the time as you say it does not prove anything but does give some us hope that we may accidently or by design beat the sandbox or google just has this massive door for new sites and sometimes leaves a little crack and the odd one slips through
steve

[Brett_Tabke]

- Registered a new domain last wednesday morning.
- DNS resolved and site was good-to-go by 10am.
- Threw 25 pages of content on it and adsense.
- Linked to it heavily from a pr6.
- spidered wednesday 11am by google.
- received about 40 referrals wednesday night from Google.
- no referrals on thursday and couldn't find it in the index.
- found it in the index on friday and received 30 referrals.
- could not find it on saturday.
- sunday found it in the index.
- generated about 200 referrals so far.

Sandbox? What's that? :-)

[phantombookman]

Hi Steve
the intersting point to fathom is did the site, unlike all my others recently, slip through by accident or design.
If it was by design then it is down to one thing only:

no outgoing links

To Brett
if the new site continues to perform for a few weeks Brett then possibly it justifies the original title I gave to the post, I hope so for all of us

Regards
Rod

[webhound]

We've had no problems with the sandbox in uncompetitive areas, but for the more competitive areas.... well thats another story.

Brett you didn't mention the category that your example was in, so I have to assume it was being found for 4-5 kw queries and not a "money term".

For these terms, good luck getting a new site ranked.

[steve40]

I thought as we are sharing
1 new site on line October 12th ( 100 pages )
47 Links from existing sites pr3 pr4 pr5
and PR Release

week 1 85 referrals
week 2 120 referalls
week 3 200 referrals

week 6 1200 referrals
Currently between 200 -- 270 referrals per day

This is a competitive market but referrals are not for the keywords targetted just more obscure versions
but the end result is the same
will be interesting to see when targetted keywords start to appear
steve

[petehall]

We bought a domain name around 2 months ago, it has several high PR links and only shows as a URL with 1,200 backlinks.

I have never had this sort of trouble with delay of indexing - I am wondering if this is some sort of problem with the domain name as opposed to sandbox related.

Someone else had the domain before us so it is possible something bad has happened to it in the past... but how can I be sure?

[androidtech]

But couldn't the 2-4 weeks "good", but after that off to the bottom of the SERP's be a freshbot related phenomena, not the sandbox?

[MHes]

>Sandbox? What's that? :-)

200 visitors per day is either sandbox or you are in a very uncompetitive sector with few searches.

[Hanu]

I think with all the hype around the sb (I still think it exists), people tend to blame the sb in cases when other problems like over- or under-optimization (specially missing or badly optimized anchor text) cause their sites to rank badly.

[Powdork]

petehall it sounds like you are suffering from an expired domain penalty.

[cabbie]

>>I have never had this sort of trouble with delay of indexing<<

Petehall,
your domain is suffereing the expired domain penalty.It could be a year before it gets indexed.Write [e-mail] with "reinclusion" in the subject line and explain the story to them.You may get lucky.

[Powdork]

200 visitors per day is either sandbox or you are in a very uncompetitive sector with few searches.

It's even worse when it is 200 visitors since last wednesday.

Brett are you sticking your tongue out at us and going 'na na na na na', or is it firmly implanted in your cheek?

[RussellC]

I would be lucky to get 10 referals from Google in a day on one of my sandboxed sites. (March 04) Very competitive area, main term = 22,500,000 results.

[webhound]

russelc, yup thats what i'm talkig about. especially for the main keywords, not those obscure 4-5 kw terms.