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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
No, I haven't seen this. Although it's hard to say exactly. There are different behaviors I believe depending on how your site entered the sandbox, renamed with 301 is different than brand new.
Not ranking for its own name is interesting. However, this is a problem with google in general.
Currently if you are looking for softwarewidgetx, that's the product name, you'll need to go to my, or a few other websites that refer to it to find it, since google isn't able to place the product source site before 11. Just like google isn't able to give me productname + productnumber + manual[or specifications] usually anywhere in the top 20 or 30.
Every time I read MHES's posts I get a sneaking suspicion I am reading someone who works for google. Always trying to just slightly misdirect the thinking, slightly spin things. Or is it just that you're trying to make simple things complex and complex things simple? This is how spin works, a bit of truth mixed with some untruth, just enough to fool some of the people some of the time.
Every time I read MHES's posts I get a sneaking suspicion I am reading someone who works for google.
Always feels that way to me when I read his posts as well.
Seen an example of this, from #350 to nowhere. (Still #1 for all the allin commands though.)
OK I work for Google, and anyone in the travel sector, (especially in the UK) who wants good rankings must make their site totally flash and avoid any links with other sites. ;)
<truth>I work in Scotland, been doing seo for 4 years and have absolutely no connection with google.</truth>
>you continually admit new sites have different rules than old sites and then, truly bizarrely, you say the sandbox doesn't exist.
Just to be clear on my thoughts..."What has changed is getting any site into the top ten has got harder, especially a new site, because it doesn't have the 'history' or 'hilltop' links that mature with age and give you the ranking." I don't think therefore new or old sites are treated any differently.
>it's just a friggin' web site!
Yup, that can change your life.
Google is a very influential web site, but, let's not forget, it's just a friggin' web site!
Yeah, right! (Or as we say in Scotland "Aye, right!")
I apologize for the rant. The lack of perspective wears thin after a while. Back to the sandbox topic. Please!
Daveatifg: Read my post again. It most certainly was not off topic!
If this is an improvement initiative surely they would be happy to let the public know about it, officially or unofficially?
sandbox = hilltop
I've been wondering that too, recently. I just don't really understand how Hilltop (HT) can cause a lag like that. Either there is an authority or there isn't. If there is, it would affect old and new sites likewise. But wait! Isn't it common for new sites to get PR fast, but only non-topical PR from random affiliate sites? Hilltop on the other hand needs topical PR (LocalRank) and that is probably much harder to get and it takes a longer time to get it. I think I'm becoming a fan of "SB = HT" ...
SB=HT explains two things:
1) Delayed effect of links. With HT, topical links count. The rate in which topical links can be obtained is generally slower than that of non-topical links. A lot of people take any link because they aren't aware of the fact that they need to get the right kind.
2) Some people can get around the sandbox. These people simply obtained topical PR from authority sites, whether by dumb luck or wisdom. The lucky ones boast about having gotten around the SB but can't say how. The wise ones know how, but don't talk about it.
Now that Google is big, telling everyone how the sandbox works would be shooting yourself in the foot. That's why they don't brag about it.
Where did that come from? Are you seriously sugesting that I would be so naive that I would suggest that they would "tell everyone how the sandbox works?"
If the sandbox was a radical new feature introduced to their algorithm and designed to improve spam we would hae been told about it by now, officially or unofficially.
I think the link delay is seperate from pure hilltop, and it does not last too long. The interesting bit is where you start to reason through why old domains can get new pages ranking quite quickly. :)
It’s pure speculation but what if the sandbox isn’t a deliberate act to fight spam but it's a result of space, processing power and the development of separate indexes with separate algos as suggested in this thread, post 142. If this was the case then it could explain the Sandbox phenomenon, Google denials and their secrecy.
Perhaps the sandbox is not a direct effect on new websites but an effect on Google itself which in turn has had an indirect impact on all new domains.
This is of course completely backwards. Authority links get you in the sandbox, not the other way around. You have a good chance to avoid the sandbox by not getting any quality links, but getting a huge volume of blog and guestbook links from various IPs. There could be other ways too, but that is an obvious way.
A new niche site getting links from the ten best places for an old niche site is the kiss of death for the new site.
