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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
Truth is Google is an ad firm and the organic side is turning to spammy fluff more and more in my opinion. Maybe it can't be a perfect system. Possibly clustering or filtered metasearch is the ultimate answer. I don't need Google to live so ultimately I don't give a damn.
I completely disagree with this statement. What changed as far as I can see is the level of spam over-optimization filtering, which can account for some old sites dropping. I have absolutely no doubt that google is currently assigning a massive over-valuing of site age, this is very obvious in some searches I do where year after year the same sites appear in the top 5, even though for that search term they simply are not the answer to the very specific search. But what these sites all share is the following:
Old, well established domain names
Old, well established web page file names (urls).
There is nothing else I can see that adequately explains this problem.
By the way, Google is still unable to deliver me a product manual for a product, a scanner in this case, when I type in product name + product number + manual.
Just shopping sites. Google is starting to make me laugh, it's so obvious that it's f#$#$ed up that I can't take it seriously anymore. 2^32 bit index magically grows to 2*2^32, which means, dugh, there was in fact a 2^32 bit index, there was a secondary 2^32 bit index, filled with junk and sandboxed urls and dead abandoned urls. This shows me who understood this problem over the last year and who didn't.
Maybe one day math and logic will be taught well again, but if my logic teacher was right in his assessment, that day will come when parents stop using the television as a nanny... [mhes, this wasn't you by any chance was it? every time I read your stuff, it almost but not quite makes sense, like the logic motor is not quite right...]
See this example:
There is a site, launched on 16 August 2004, currently featured on Alexa's homepage, showing 6100% growth.
This site can also be found in Google SERPS for it's search terms, including single word terms.
It's possible that those were made by members here, who know perfectly well that if you're starting a new site, the very first thing you do is register the domain name, point some links to it, optimized of course for keyword phrases, then start building the site. Given at least 3 months to create a real site, often much more, these sites could very well have been linked to over 6 months ago. That method was explicitly discussed here over the last year, as was the success of it.
Since google indexes the links whether or not there is a site in existence, this could easily explain what you're seeing. Marcia commented on this quite a bit if I remember right, back when I was still lurking.
Google is way in over their head handling all the data and trying to leave out the spammers. They are afraid of the SERPS deteriorating more (probably did some search quality check with the new sites included) so they're banning all new sites regardless, until they catch up with the technology. They can't leave them out forever. CNET, NYT or someone will eventually write an article about this and Google will be embarrassed.
They can't leave them out forever. CNET, NYT or someone will eventually write an article about this and Google will be embarrassed.
I think this is the biggest thing that has me scratching my head about google...why on earth hasn't the press been crawling all over this? They love bad news, don't they?
All it takes is one solid article in the NYT or similar to get the ball rolling (anyone remember what started the atkins craze?)
If anyone has the private email of an investigative (tech) reporter....now would be a good time to point them here ;-)
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!
