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

[hdpt00]

I get about 2-3 a day on intermediate terms ~4 million results or so, heavy optimization. I add hundreds of link partners a week but am beginning to think that not linking out may be the only solution, hence 3 way links. Luckily I got my new sites up to a PR 5 so any new site I start I'll offer links from my older, PR 5 sites.

That will be my new strategy.

[petehall]

Powdork, cabbie - Thank you very much for that.

We have always registred new domains in the past - this the first of this kind we've ever tried to use.

Thanks once again.

[BillyS]

As long as we are sharing...

I have been adding pages lately at a rate of 6 per day after starting out slowly. Launched in late May. Very competitive area - around 30 million on 2 kw combination. Around 350 pages right now at around 400 - 600 words per page.

I know I should balance, but I have not sought links for quite some time now. The site got a DMoz listing very early - back in late June. The site is PR 4 right now.

Just this week I am starting to see a very slow pick up in referals from google. Now getting around 20 referal a day on the oddball 4 - 7 word phrases.

I get traffice from one KW that I rank #7 on with about 400,000 competing.

One thing I noticed is that people refer to competition as the factor. I think the sandbox has more to do with the phrase itself, not the competition. I rank #2 on a very odd 2 kw phrase that has 1.8 million in competition, but the volume of searches is very low.

I am beginning to wonder if part of my problem is under optimizing. After I burn out on writing, I am going to focus on anchor text links within the site. I think that might help google figure out how everything ties together.

[conroy]

I can throw up 1000 pages and start getting 25-100 referrals a day from Google. That is not hard. Ranking for competitive "money" terms is another story.

[Brett_Tabke]

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

Off 25 pages in the first 18hrs of being indexed? 200 referrals are an awesome start.

[notredamekid]

No sandbox?

Then why are all these sites sandboxed? The only thing they all have in common is their newness.

I've seen all sorts sandboxed:
competitive / non-competitive
aggressive linkbuilding / natural linkbuilding
commercial / non-profit
heavily SEO'd / not SEO'd at all

The only common denominator: domain less than (10?) months old.

Would you care to theorize and back up with evidence what exactly could explain the way that the majority of new sites are currently ranked?

Or, what made your site different?

[notredamekid]

- 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.

And if I didn't know you better (that is,know of you), I'd say you were pulling our leg.

Also, let's see if you're still getting the traffic in 14 days.

[Brett_Tabke]

It has floated in and out of the index. After the initial burst of referrals and rankings - it has went flat with only a few referrals per day. eg: welcome to the freeze...pass the ice.

[BeeDeeDubbleU]

Classic sandbox behaviour.

This does however make me wonder if it is a capacity issue? If they can list new sites for a day or two what's to stop them leaving them in IF they want too?

[mm1220]

How would an algorithm distinguish between a "money" and a "non-money" term? Do you guys reckon there's a hand composed list, one compiled via adwords data or what?

[hdpt00]

How about the AdWords price. That could be a very easy way. Of course there are probably a million other factors. Searches per month, etc.

[phantombookman]

I don't believe there is any connection between money terms etc. I firmly believe that when G sees a new site/domain it has a filter for it, if it trips then they dump a ton of sand on you. If not you are through.

All talk of how competetive youur area is how many visitors etc is irrelevant in my opinion. The main point is does your site get ranked by Google roughly where it should be?

I built a site that went in at #3 for the business name keyword search but it was still sandboxed. It should have been #1 but being such an unusual name G could find only 2 pages to push it behind. Had it been a Britney Spears fan site then it would have been 1000's of pages back.

My latest site appears to have dodged the sandstorm and the index page is currently at #3 for a one word search, exactly where it should be.
By comparison I have another site that has taken 6 months to get to the 1st page and it should be #1

Regards
Rod (sorry if this went on a bit)

[BillyS]

How would an algorithm distinguish between a "money" and a "non-money" term? Do you guys reckon there's a hand composed list, one compiled via adwords data or what?

I think the answer to this one is easy, based on search volumes. Any term that is searched frequently can make money for those at the top of the list, regardless of the term. They don't need adwords for help.

The fact that GG does not comment on this topic is telling. Personally, I don't think Google is broken, I think this is a filter of sorts that would be considered proprietary information.

I've closely examined high volume searches and I usually see low quality results appear after about position 300 - almost every time. The search phrase might appear on the page, but the page is clearly not about the term.

I cannot even rank on these same terms even if I have several pages dedicated to the term.

[2by4]

<It has floated in and out of the index. After the initial burst of referrals and rankings - it has went flat with only a few referrals per day. eg: welcome to the freeze...pass the ice. >

Umm, what was the point of this posting then? I'd assume if anyone is familiar with this behavior it would be the admin of WebmasterWorld.

So we sit here knowing what we already know, there is a sandbox, it's in effect, and it even works on brett's new site. Yawn.

[DerekH]

2by4
I think you need to read Brett's message #18 and THEN message #36 to realise that Brett is actually saying something much more significant than you seem to have read :-)
DerekH

[dvduval]

There is a difference between getting lots of referrals, as Brett says, and ranking highly for competitive keywords on a site that is less than 10 months old.

If anyone has an example of a site on competitive (over 2 million results), commercial keywords that ranks in the top 3, PLEASE PM me with an example. I have a feeling my inbox will be empty!

[claus]

Uhm... i recently launched a new site about two weeks ago (yawn away...)

Thing is - if you think in terms of "primary keywords" it's a two word phrase. There's 32,700,000 (!) competing pages in the SERPS, and the top site has more than 13,000 backlinks, to the front page alone - and all genuine (ie no linkexchange).

Now, here's the point: When reading these threads, doesn't anyone of you think (even remotely) that it would be rather unnatural if any site made it to top 10 in those SERPS in 14 days? Unlikely, even? For that matter even top 100? Or two months? Two years?

Not all SERPS are that hard to get of course, but i think you get my hint anyway.

(I'll get there in a few years or so, but i don't really care about those two word serps anyway - I'm not CNN [searchengineworld.com] you know)

[steveb]

The top ten is clearly not the point. When decently made official sites for people can't rank in the top 200 for their name, that highlights the issue more. Old Google could rank sites like this properly in three months; new Google can't handle the task at all.

[2by4]

<<< 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? :-) >>>

Ok, I'm reading it again, what's your point? Same old same old. New site peaks initially before entering the sandbox, that's old news, there's nothing 'deep' in that. I had that happen too, made a new site, it beat a large IT company with a similar name for 2 weeks in phrases both sites shared, this isn't news, it never came back after that peak. And I did it with a handful of links from low PR sites.

[BillyS]

If anyone has an example of a site on competitive (over 2 million results), commercial keywords that ranks in the top 3, PLEASE PM me with an example. I have a feeling my inbox will be empty!

I rank on a #1 on a key phrase that returns 1.5 million results. To me, competition has nothing to do with it. Frequency of search is everything. It is not a common phrase that people search for, but lots of sites have the phrase in it.

[nzmatt]

How would an algorithm distinguish between a "money" and a "non-money" term? Do you guys reckon there's a hand composed list, one compiled via adwords data or what?

I think the answer to this one is easy, based on search volumes. Any term that is searched frequently can make money for those at the top of the list, regardless of the term. They don't need adwords for help.

...Volumes, Adwords?

Why would Google not have just 'sewn' Adwords keyphrase/average cost per click data into their main search algo?

Money phrase + new website + sanbox filter = Google Adwords advertising = Google/shareholder profit = weaker search results + unhappy webmasters.

How could it be any other way? :)

[edited by: nzmatt at 2:09 am (utc) on Dec. 9, 2004]

[nzmatt]

Hey - what happened there?

[Powdork]

what happened there?

It's usually a case of a missing bracket using the quote function

[nzmatt]

Argh..that's better

[dvduval]

If anyone has an example of a site on competitive (over 2 million results), commercial keywords that ranks in the top 3, PLEASE PM me with an example. I have a feeling my inbox will be empty!

;)

My inbox is still empty :)

[Jesse_Smith]

If anyone has an example of a site on competitive (over 2 million results), commercial keywords that ranks in the top 3, PLEASE PM me with an example. I have a feeling my inbox will be empty!

I'm close, #4 and 5 out of 15,200,000. It's a registered trademark, so yah, it's commercial. er wait, the sites been around since 1996. With my other sites on the same topic, the newer it is, the farther down it is in SERPs. The eight year old site is #3, and 4, and a four year old site is #27.

[dvduval]

Yes, pm me if your site meets the description I gave AND was started since February 2004.

[nzmatt]

Anyone who can do that will be very rich indeed - for more than one reason! You may have to contact them on their superyacht.

[dvduval]

I keep hearing some interesting theories, some black hat and some not, of ways to beat it, but I have yet to see a true to life example.

[jk3210]

In doing a search that has 22 million results, what's the difference between a site that's in the sandbox and a site that ranks number 18,627,001?

IOW what's the difference between a site that's "in the sandbox" and a site that simply has crappy rankings?

And if there is a difference, how can you tell?