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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
If there is a delay of sorts then take advantage of it and worry less about ranking and more about creating better content. When your time to get out is finally here, just imagine all of the traffic you will get with the new content you've added instead of watching the rankings change.
Does that help google get better results?Is that the point of this forum?
If the world's leading source of information is no longer able to organize the worlds information and make it universally accessible, a forum devoted to that source of information would be remiss in not letting that problem become public.
None of them are particularly competitive, with competition ranging from 10,000 results to 1,000,000 results. Some of them have 'money' keywords, others are completely non-commercial, some share an IP, others don't. Some have backlinks, others have none. Some have regional (.com.au) domains, others are .com. Some have three pages, others have hundreds. None of these details seem to have much correlation with the sites ranking at all. (eg. one of the sites with no inbound links comes up, one of the sites with quite a few links doesn't).
Obviously five sites isn't a very big sample, but if I was a media outlet I wouldn't report this story because I just can't see any real evidence here that there is any sort of all-encompassing sandbox being applied by Google (and I've just read all 200-odd posts before this one). Certainly there seems to be something going on, but sooner or later it will change and webmasters will be making up another theory to explain their poor results.
I'm going to go back to work now and I'm going to keep making good websites with good content and I'm going to keep following Google's guidelines for webmasters and I'm going to stop worrying about theories.
Anybody want to join me?
First of all, none of my sites are in the sandbox, but if one exists and Google doesn't rank them, creating good content is not gonna help you. Why do you assume that all the new sites are spam and dont; follow G's guidelines?
On another note, I just read an interesting theory that it's not sites which are in the sandbox, but the links to them - new links are on probation for an as yet unknown period. I don't know how correct this theory is, but it's interesting. It would explain a lot, but a lot is still unexplained.
I would stop worrying about theories if I were you ;)
the probelm is that soem decent webamsters are putting a lot of work and their work apparently is not being recognized by Google. That's all, and even though no one owes them anything, it still sucks and they have a reason to be upset. Google on the other hand has to balance those interests...I understand.
(and I've just read all 200-odd posts before this one)
Thats 1794 posts i found through a quick search (having the Google search on the page [webmasterworld.com] really helps). Searching on google for 'google sandbox' will yield thousands more (not including the hidden content on new sites). I would say it's already news.
I'm saying that if you build a site to Google's guidelines and with good intent then you should get listed appropriately in Google's index. If your site is one of the top ten most relevant sites for a particular search term it should get a top ten spot.is spot on accurate. But it simply is not happening.
Lets take a look at one of the folks who doesn't think it exists
[webmasterworld.com...]
Um, that's the point. For sites built this year, this is not occuring on a widespread scale.
If you want to go crying to the media, good luck, but as far as I can see it the only story here is that a lot of new sites seem to be having trouble getting 'decent' results in Google.
Sparticus you are the master of the understatement. This is not a trivial issue. It's one of the biggest stories to hit the SE industry in ... well, in a long time!
What many of us cannot understand is that no one from the mass media or even the business media has though it worth mentioning, even in the passing. This is very, very strange. I would mention the word "conspiracy" but I don't think that it makes sense in this context.
I thought that it may be that the media consider the subject to be beyond the general public's comprehension but then they have reported more high tech issues than this in the past?
STATEMENT: There is overwhelming evidence that since early this year Google has not, by default, been featuring new sites in their search results. That is ALL types of new sites, not just spammy affiliate sites.
Many of the acknowledged experts on this site, including Brett, have recognised this so that's good enough for me. These are the facts as we know them, so please don't insult those of who know our way around here by denying it, unless you can provide real evidence to the contrary.
It does not help and serves only to increase our frustration :(
I just searched google . com for "Google Sandbox" and right there in first place is a link to the Google Adwords page!
