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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
but what about those of us who do not want to do the PPC thing?
I wonder if Walmart ever said "But what if we don't want to pay to advertise our business?"
I think people would save themselves alot of hadaches and sleepless nights if they would learn to approach their business model(s) in a more realistic way. Traditional businesses ALL have to PAY for a good location with lots of foot traffic. The prime spots in any mall go for a premium, with the more out of the way locations selling for MUCH less (I know, I just put down the deposit on one).
If you launch a site with the mindset that you will need to pay to drive the traffic to it, optimize it to convert that traffic accordingly at a high enough percentage that a profit from your PPC campaigns is easy to achieve, then any "organic" free traffic you get will simply be icing on the cake, and the frustration you feel about being sandbozed, or dropped in the serps, or whatever will be minimized.
Keep in mind with every major player in the search industry being a public traded company dedicated to ever-increasing profits, if you are a commmercial site, they WILL eventually find a way to monetize the traffic they send you, it's only a matter of time.
Picture yourself building the biggest and best shopping mall in the world that attracts millions upon millions of customers everyday, and then leasing all your prime space for free. That's just about the way (I think) the google boys (and very other major engine) feel about commercial listings appearing in their serps for free. The sandbox, and every other tactic (or algo change) that drives commercial sites down in their serps is just antoher way for them to try to recoup all the revenue they feel they are losing.
It's not going to get better anytime soon. Frankly, I think it's going to get worse. Much worse...at least for those that rely on free traffic to make a living.
It's actually kind of ironis to me. As a merchant, since organic listings are so unreliable, our affiliate program has become a real boon to our overall traffic diversification strategy. The very sites google is probably trying to eliminate/dampen in it's serps (i.e affiliate sites, etc.) thru the sandbox, algo changes, etc., which in turn hurt merchants as well (the old "throwing the baby out with the bathwater scenario) is instead (IMHO) causing merchants to instead rely even more heavily on those very marketing channels (i.e. affiliates) google is trying to dampen.
Around and around we go.....
Thanks for your comments webfusion, but what about those of us who are creating websites simply because it's a passion, and not to sell products? Will the little guys, the ones that bring diversity and personality to the web, be forced to start slapping on a PPC campaign just to get noticed?
Not at all. However, if the "little guys" are creating websites just for "passion", then obviously, profit is ont the motivation, right? If that IS the case, then those same hobbyists (for lack of a better word) can easily garner traffic in a multitude of other ways (through article, blogs, discussion boards dedicated to their topic of interest, etc.).
BUT...let's be realisitic. I doubt anyone here complaining about their google ranking(s) is doing so because no one gets to see the site about their cool stamp collection. No....I'm inclined to believe that those that complain the loudest are (of course) motiviated by their perceived loss in potential profit that not attaining the rankings they (believe they) deserve due to whatever is holding their site(s) back.
Don't get me wrong....I love it when our site/pages rise to the top of the serps in google (or any engine for that matter), but I would never be foolish enough to rely solely on a traffic source for which I have little to no control over as my primary source of income. Organic traffic is icing on the cake....the rest of it is up to our own marketing efforts.
I've NOT got one new site past the 'sandbox' filter yet that is optimised for 'money' terms.
I've been reading for days and looking for an update on your new sites. Anything new to report?
Lee
maybe most, but not all. Not everybody does this with money as their primary motivation, hard as that may be to believe.
Its somewhere between a hobby site and research.
I would feel terrible if I vanished from the SERPs and all my work went unnoticed.
I've had the site up under its own domain for 4 years now, so no sandbox effects,
maybe just delayed benefit from any new links.
- Larry
To Rod, who started this thread, and Brett (What Sandbox?)
I've been reading for days and looking for an update on your new sites. Anything new to report?
Lee
The new site continues to rank well, it is doing exactly what it should were it an established site so clearly still, and hopefully now never, not sandboxed.
I have another that is crawling painfully out after approx 6 months.
Regards
Rod
Are you associated with a hosting company of the same name?
Not everybody does this with money as their primary motivation, hard as that may be to believe.
This is very true, as you say not everyone is in this just for the money. I am currently working on a site about the poet Robert Burns for my local Burns club. This is totally non-commercial and I am not being paid for this. I am even paying for the hosting and domain name myself. I did lots of research for this and I have spent all my spare time over the last couple of weeks working on the site. Even if I say so myself this is one of the better sites about Robert Burns but for sure it will be sandboxed and that really pisses me off because it deserves to be seen.
Before this I did a great site about Lawn Bowling for my bowling club. This has worked really well and I have lots of people linking to it because it is also a good site. But once again it is sandboxed. This proves that Google is not working (intentionally or otherwise) for the greater good.
I have another that is crawling painfully out after approx 6 months.<<
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Is there a difference in the subject-matter of the two sites? For example, is one about [V]iagra and the other about your pet cat?
sandbox?
If you're competing for 32,700 sites found, that is beyond uncompetitive. Try a million or so as the minimum.
Agreed.
Is there a difference in the subject-matter of the two sites? For example, is one about [V]iagra and the other about your pet cat?
No very similar, content, design and layout. The only difference is one has quite a few outgoing links and the other none.
I firmly believe content and how competetive a term is to be largely irrelevant. I work with terms that range from 20 million returns to 200k and see no difference. Of course it is harder to rank higher for more popular terms but that has no relevance to the sandbox.
I had one site return immediately #3 but was, and still is, fimly in the sandbox
Any sandbox effect is more likely related to number of searches conducted rather than results returned.
I'm not sure there is a specific sandbox though. Like others, I launch sites all the time. Some rank well, others don't. Older sites ebb and flow too in the rankings.
Big algo changes may make it look like a sandbox is in place, but it may well be voodoo.
As I've said before, it's often the quality of returned search results that puzzle me more than why Google thinks my site is in the top ten or 234th.
You should be able to rank well within 6 months for many phrases but this all depends on how good your competitors are and the sector you are in. You are just not going to displace equally well optimised sites that are established.
I now believe members who say they can beat sandbox, because in reality there is no sandbox. Its all down to seo work, and there are some very clever seo people out there.
Sandbox = poor optimisation
Sandbox is where the innocent live.
I now believe members who say they can beat sandbox, because in reality there is no sandbox.Without going into the logic of that argument, What a bunch of hoooey!
Its all down to seo work, and there are some very clever seo people out there.
I'll take that as a compliment, thank you!
Many are irrelevant, many are spam, and many are both.
The sites clustered on the first few pages USED to be the deserving, but now I'd say it's about 30%, the rest is useless.
This statement is incorrect based on all of the research I've done. The behavior known as the "sandbox" is not due to "poor optimization". I have seen large amounts of evidence that prove this.
I do believe in the sandbox, and am equally frustrated by the seeming inconsistencies in the G algorithm. But at the end of the day I have to acknowledge that G has to grow and change to outpace the spammers (of which I am NOT one). Still, it is unfortunate that so many "innocents" are getting caught in the box.
For myself, every single website I have ever worked on ranks within the top 3 for it's primary, extremely competitive keywords in MSN Beta, so I know I'm doing something right - at least in MSN's eyes.
Don't look for someone here to lay it all out for you. Hints have been dropped - experiment for yourself. Think outside the box. "If I were G, what would I do?"
I don't know a definitive, all-cases solution to the sandbox, but if I did I wouldn't publish it for the whole world to see, especially if it was something that I would reasonably expect others to be able to figure out for themselves.
And if it is a Google problem, they'll get it worked out eventually, or go the way of AltaVista (I remember making good money on their stock several years back :-)
