Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
If your site is less than a year old you are likely sandboxed.
I can't believe most sites under a year's age are in some sort of penalty box. Google would be useless. So, I want to know:
1. Are all sites sandboxed, or do certain traits (like affiliate links, low content) trigger it?
2. How long does it last?
3. How variable is the duration?
4. How do you know your site is being sandboxed?
5. Does the effect taper off or is it a binary thing?
6. What gets you out of the sandbox? Is it merely time or do good links or whatever speed it up?
Thanks.
This is interesting as well, as my studying of the supp index has thus far revealed that individual PAGES get marked as supplemental - not entire sites. Either this was an honest mistake and the writer meant to say "pages," OR an entire site is placed in one or the other index, but only certain pages are physically marked as "supplemental results."
GGuy - this would be a great time for you to clarify!
You guys are real masochists, actually asking someone to tell you more spin. GGuy was the guy who first spun the capacity issue in case you missed that. I'd like to never see his postings again, since there are just enough people who believe everything he says to make it that much more confusing longterm. Before you listen to a word he, or anyone else from google, says, make sure to ask them how many stock options they got, when they plan on selling those stocks, and so on. An honest answer to that question would make me more liable to pay attention to what they said afterwords.
Oh, and by the way, yahoo is having exactly the same problems, only nobody cares about yahoo so nobody talks about it, same thing, dump pages from primary index, except they just randomly dump your site's pages, we have one that currenlty has less than 1% of it's pages indexed, down from about 8% a few months ago. Same exact problem, solution more randomly organized. At least they don't bother pretending.
Id love to hear what he has to say though, i dont neccissarily belive what he says but i do try to listen and give it a chance...but i do not believe everything i hear ;)
i care about yahoo.. i rank better on yahoo than google, yahoo is the #2 search engine behind google..
When somebody essentially either lies to my face, or enables someone else to pass a lie on to me, I no longer have any interest in hearing anything they say. It may not have been his fault, I'm not saying it was, but he was a conduit that allowed that lie to be propagated. Which is why there should be no search engines representatives allowed on these boards, in fact, reading through the TOS they aren't allowed, but here they are anyway, clouding the waters.
as my studying of the supp index has thus far revealed that individual PAGES get marked as supplemental - not entire sites.That was kind of my point. Its the pages that get marked as "Supplemental Index" but its sites that are added to the auxiliary index. So if a page on a non-auxiliary index site is down while crawled or no longer exists because of a 301 or something it gets marked as "supplemental" in the results. If a site is sandboxed then all pages are in the auxiliary index but they are not marked as supplemental unless they meet one of the supplemental marking criteria.
It cant get sites into the index due to these problems but wont admit it. A year on and still nothing done about it despite it being worth billions of dollars.
Time to bail now, if you hold stock cause this baby is going down by the looks of it. The results index is being seen as stale by many now and those numbers will grow. It does now make sense why they have this problem and it does sound like the most likely reason for the majority of sites less than a year old not showing up in the main SERPS index on Google.
Looks like MSN could end up taking Googles market share quicker than expected!
It is amazing that a company worth so much, in such a strong market position could be having this capacity issue. Looks like the google boys got out at the right time!
Good luck all - very interesting thread this one
I don't think G is facing anything that any other major engine isn't facing: how do deal with spam; how to deliver relevant results; how to overcome technological hurdles; how to maintain an efficient business model while delivering organic (free) results (please, no AdWords conspiracies).
If that's true, one or all of the big three will eventually work through the hurdles and come out strong. I believe G will only get tougher to rank well on as they crack down on dupe content, affiliate sites, ROS linking, etc. But I plan to weather the storm. I believe G, Y!, and/or MSN will come out the other side, and that persistence in improving my sites will pay off.
And with that, let's nail the lid down tight and see what happens over the next few months...
siteseo, do you ever take your resources and try to optimize them to boost your income? Do you ever practice link building or onpage/site architecture modifications to improve your traffic, and thus your income? If you can improve a click through rate, would you do it? Now if you answered no to any of these questions, your clients would be well justified in firing you. But magically, if Google does this, it's a conspiracy?
If you do these things, are you engaging in a 'conspiracy', or would you suggest that this idea is somekind of 'conspiracy theory'? I doubt you'd agree that you are, yet when it's suggested that a company with one and only one primary income generator does exactly that, suddenly it's a conspiracy theory? Please. Don't hold google up to different standards than the rest of the business world follows, they aren't different, one day that simple fact will sink in here, but it's obviously not here yet.
Again, for hundreth time: google income hit a record level in the quarter preceding the IPO. It has maintained at that level this quarter. Google had access to many many more times financial advisors than most of the posters in these forums obviously have, and equally obviously very sorely need, and this boost didn't just happen by accident. You can believe what you want, it's totally irrelevant, they got the cash, IPO prices were quite high. And now, when they start selling off their shares, they'll get that personal bonanza.
Its just a marketing strategy, theyre here to promote how "friendly" google is. That was their whole marketing strat which is also why the loss of Cindy McCaffrey, Google's Vice President of Corporate Marketing makes me uneasy about whats to come for google.
It makes me mad that googleguy posts on many topics but wont comment on the real questions.... might as well not be here if thats the case. Of course if he did comment here.. who knows if hes lying or what..
You have to look at the bigger picture. If G wanted to increase revenue via AdWords channels, why not sandbox ALL sites - OLD established sites with deep pockets? Why limit it to "ecommerce" sites, or "new" sites? More than just ecom sites got hit in the fall of '03, so the theory doesn't hold up.
Again, I DON'T KNOW the truth of the matter - but then again - neither do you. You could be right - but you have no way of proving it. I could be right - but I have no way of proving it. Spreading ill-will about Google won't make them improve. Bringing certain inequities to light in a rational manner MIGHT, so I suggest we focus on that, and not on unprovable theories that make mild-mannered users run the other way, and make us sound like a bunch of whiners. I hate the sandbox as much as the next future-web-millionaire, but the only way I can do anything about it is to deal in FACTS.
You pursue your approach, and I guess I'll take mine (it takes all kinds...)
And that's all I've got to say about that...
Because it wasn't necessary, Google knew almost a year before the IPO that they had to do their IPO, they had no option once they issued x amount of stock to their employees. And they had the capacity issues. So why not kill two birds with one stone; solve the capacity issue, boost income, that really just doesn't seem like any weird far-fetched conspiracy to me, I guess I've followed business practices that are 10 times more sleazy over the past 20 years to really think of a simple revenue boosting system that really doesn't hurt their users that much as some wild extreme idea, companies like Enron and Worldcom have simply set the bar so high that a reasonable manipulation like increasing adwords slightly while adapting to a concrete event like a full algo by sandboxing new sites and forcing new site owners to buy adwords seems completely reasonable to me, again, I would have done that too I think if I was Google, why not? I prefer to ask the question, by the way, why not?, not why?.
"...there was recently a thread that suggested Google was running out of 'address space' to label our documents. I was talking to another engineer here and he said he almost fell out of his chair laughing when he read that...."
From a different forum, 17 months later:
GoogleGuy on November 11, 2004, in a thread that was slobbering over Google's overnight increase from 4,285,199,774 pages to "searching 8,058,044,651 web pages."
GoogleGuy said, "So in case anyone was still wondering, we're not limited by four-byte docids. But I suppose that was pretty clear."
Actually, it wasn't clear at all to me. The only thing that's clear is that Google's count for one of my sites for the URL-only listings is 211,000. Their count for the full listings is 110,000, and I don't believe that either. This site has never had more than 130,000 pages on it, and all the filenames have been stable for years.
So Google adds the main index to the Supplemental Index to the URL-only listings, and comes up with 8,058,044,651. All the pundits think Google is so smart, that they can double their index overnight. The stock keeps shooting skyward.
Meanwhile, back at the keyboards of thousands of webmasters, nothing has changed. Good sites and pages are still "disappeared."
No, GoogleGuy, that is not clear at all. What's more, I don't want to hear your explanation this time.
However, I must disagree with your "have you considered the possibility that it's a coincidence" belief with regard to Adwords-Sandbox- increased revenue- IPO.
There is far too much money involved for this to be a "coincidence"! After all, making money is now Google's whole purpose as an entity, and it’s reason for existing.
The problem for Google is that this type of manipulation adversely affects web searchers, website owners and webmasters. Bleeding them will NOT ensure long term Google profit because this is Google’s actual source of profit!
Yes, exactly. I thought about what I'd written, and it suddenly struck me how ludicrous my thinking was:
Creating a sandbox deliberately can have only one side affect: boosting adwords income. This is completely inseparable from the creation of the sandbox.
If you dominate the search market, and you create a system where only older domains can get indexed and listed properly, there is only one possible outcome: new domain owners must pay to get in the front page, by joining adwords. There is no other possible result. Adwords income must rise with the creation of the sandbox. However, as nzmatt noted, this is a risky short term method, and cannot be maintained long term because it depends on the pre-existing market domination google had.
But there was simply too much money involved to not take this course, and of course the algo required some course be taken [remember, it didn't have to be this particular course, as yahoo has shown, but in terms of income maximization, this was and is a very good choice].
That was the last piece that didn't make total sense to me, now it sort of forms a reasonably coherent whole, which is good enough for me.
Next thread topic: pulling the nails out of the coffin: when will Google create their new system?
I'm pretty satisfied, this looks pretty nailed down, most of the questions I had have been answered.
You've had to wait 29 threads and 285 messages what you were told on the first page?
[webmasterworld.com...]
Good grief!
I am now getting to the point of not wanting to help or give advice when I read so much conspiracy crap...it costs me time, ergo money, to assist, why should I try when you will not read and learn?
No one deserves to be at #1 unless their site is relevant in comparison to its competition...would you concur?
Does your site do this? BE HONEST!
I could go further but would you read and learn?
Nah...
I could go further but would you read and learn?A bit over the top doncha think. Do you think that once suidas got an answer from you there was no need to continue the thread? Also keep in mind that your post was in response to 2by4, who didn't post on the first page.
I am now getting to the point of not wanting to help or give advice when I read so much conspiracy crapYou are answering 2by4, who is and has been saying it is NOT a conspiracy, simply a company choosing one of several choices to handle a situation. They have chosen the path that will maximize shareholder value. Again, that's NOT a conspiracy. Who is it that hasn't read and learned?
I am very glad this thread has gone on.
Look at what we've gleaned from this thread.
1. -asdf*13 (page 3)
2. And the tool to use it at the place you would get if you combined screw and google and then changed the tld to .org (page 17)
3. An email response from a member (or former member;)) of the Google team.
4. We now know sandbox threads don't add to your post total.
Does your site do this? BE HONEST!Absofrigginlutely. But we understand that there will be inequities and at times a site that isn't quite as good may rank ahead of us because of seo tactics or other factors. However, this is (most often) about not showing up in the first 1000 results.
You want a conspiracy theory. I'll make one up for ya.
[tinfoilhat]Siteseo speaks in the same manner as the GoogleGuy of old. He has the only email response in history that possibly alludes to the sandbox. Its almost like one of those "leaks" the government makes to float an idea to see what the public response would be.[/tinfoilhat]
No offense siteseo, and no i don't believe what I just wrote.
"No one deserves to be at #1 unless their site is relevant in comparison to its competition...would you concur? [ummm dugh... are you trying to enlighten us here by saying the utterly obvious?. However, whether or not search engines can achieve that goal is a completely different question]
Does your site do this? BE HONEST! [I'd say yes. So would msn, and yahoo, and other minor search engines, and so did google pre sandbox. Not necessarily number 1, anywhere top 10 is reasonable, even though really there's only about 10 other sites out of the serps that would actually deliver what the searcher was looking for in this case, and really only about 3 that really do it, including mine]
I could go further but would you read and learn?"
Optirex, I read what everybody in these threads say. Why? Because everybody sees something, everybody thinks, and if you have enough eyes on the problem the results will be clear. I read your initial posting, do you think your answer finished the question? A few hundred posts following suggest it didn't. Maybe it didn't answer any except a single question? Hard to say, you seem to be in the minority however in believing that your post should have ended the thread. I read it and it certainly didn't end it for me, sorry.
It sounds to me like you think I'm saying something I'm not, or that I missed your tip on how to not get sandboxed, which I didn't. That has almost nothing to do with the existence of the sandbox, or anything else. I've known for a while that there are ways to not get into that problem, that has very little to do with the existence of the problem. The term 'the exception that proves the rule' I'd say is appropriate here.
Most of this stuff was pretty obvious a year ago, but it was kind of vague, ill defined, but it isn't anymore. I've read most of those sandbox threads too, but I think my questions are different than yours, that's life, it's ok, don't sweat it, you didn't answer the whole question, you gave a piece, which is and was useful, as did a bunch of other people, that's why I read these things, to collect those pieces.
And here's the fun one, I stuck my site into the sandbox on purpose, I want to see how it works first hand. It's lasted longer than I was hoping, oh well...
Someone suggested that siteseo was helping to float an idea to gage public reaction...I don't believe that for a second because I think it would be fairly easy to logically conclude that:
Google is Full = Bad Public Reaction
My only question now is that if this were true and were withheld from potential and existing shareholders, wouldn't it be a significant breach of SEC Regulations. Doesn't the company have a legal responsibility to disclose this fact as it may have a significant material effect (positive or more importantly negative effect) on it's business and revenue generation. Will Google be the next corp scandal that will rock the stock markets and test investor confidence once again.
I hear the men's minumum security prisons are not nearly as nice as Martha Stewart current residence. However they do offer inmates the opportunity to take orders for some large mail-order companies.
MS doesn't have to deliver XP on time, and Google doesn't have to have their new algo or whatever they're planning ready by x date, they never promised this, noone ever asked. MS was almost 2 years late on XP, and about the same it's looking like with longhorn, but they keep making a lot of money, which is what it's all about.
Really what they sold the stockmarket was a cute cuddly name, with a lot of value, as in googling becoming a verb. That value was at least partially real, at least about 1/10th of it was, but it's not google's fault that idiot investors failed to learn from the dot com crash and still paid way too much for the shares.
I think the only people who see this as somehow 'unethical' or whatever are on forums like this, everybody else sees a company doing business. Can anyone point out a law that has been broken by google deciding to split its index, choose to deliver one primary set of results from one of them? That's like saying MS broke a law when they decided not to include the new file system in longhorn, that was just a failure, it's not a crime.
Someone suggested that siteseo was helping to float an idea to gage public reaction...That was me, it was wild conjecture.
My only question now is that if this were true and were withheld from potential and existing shareholders, wouldn't it be a significant breach of SEC Regulations.I mentioned this possibility several months ago (http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum86/429.htm). Evidently it wasn't a very popular idea at the time.
I hear the men's minumum security prisons are not nearly as nice as Martha Stewart current residence. However they do offer inmates the opportunity to take orders for some large mail-order companies.I think we may be getting ahead of ourselves there.
Below is one of the risk factors listed in the Google IPO prospectus. The non-italicized text is the language from the original filing on April 29, 2004. The italicized text was added by amendment on June 21, 2004, and was carried foward through the more recent filings. Note that investment bankers and lawyers don't add language to a prospectus on a whim....they will argue for hours on whether it's better to use a dash or a comma. The fact that they felt the need to add language to this paragraph, suggests they were concerned about something. Also, notice that they use words such as "if" and "could" to suggest hypothetical future problems. These words are misleading if they were/are actually having a current problem.
It's not against the law to have a sandbox or a dual index or manipulate the serps to boost adwords revenue. But it is against the law to make material misrepresentations or omissions to investors, while the company and the insiders sell shares off at inflated prices. Of course, no one cares while the stock is going up, because investors are not being harmed. If the stock price plummets when the sandbox becomes mainstream knowledge, that's when we can start preparing the orange jumpsuits.
--
"We may have difficulty scaling and adapting our existing architecture to accommodate increased traffic and technology advances or changing business requirements, which could lead to the loss of users, advertisers and Google Network members, and cause us to incur expenses to make architectural changes.
To be successful, our network infrastructure has to perform well and be reliable. The greater the user traffic and the greater the complexity of our products and services, the more computing power we will need. In 2004, we expect to spend substantial amounts to purchase or lease data centers and equipment and to upgrade our technology and network infrastructure to handle increased traffic on our web sites and to roll out new products and services. This expansion is going to be expensive and complex and could result in inefficiencies or operational failures. If we do not implement this expansion successfully, or if we experience inefficiencies and operational failures during the implementation, the quality of our products and services and our users’ experience could decline. This could damage our reputation and lead us to lose current and potential users, advertisers and Google Network members. The costs associated with these adjustments to our architecture could harm our operating results. Cost increases, loss of traffic or failure to accommodate new technologies or changing business requirements could harm our operating results and financial condition."
I have a site that is not ranking well. I've added several links via link swapping, directory listings, and some purchased text ads to internal pages. The pages are pretty well optimized.
I then created another page in the site with content about a related topic, but in another city without any links, except for one path from my home page.
I then added a link to the page from my other page with lots of incoming links. I then started searching google for the keywords in my optimized page with no external incoming links. I wasn't surprised to see neither page listed since this is a site that is not ranking.
A few days ago I stumbled upon searching for "my keyword phrase" repeated several times until the word count is over 16 and usually over 18 and sites that don't rank well, suddenly do similar to "keyword phrase -absdf X 13. So if you try this search widgets widgets widgets etc until you have about 18 of them. Then my site that doesn't show up ranks very highly. I then searched for my keyword phrase on the page without external links with the search term repeated several times and the page with the link on it ranks on the first page.
I'm not sure what to make of this, but play with the repeated search term thing and see what you make of it...and of course share it with us.
Thanks for that find.
Mc
WRT ...
You have to look at the bigger picture. If G wanted to increase revenue via AdWords channels, why not sandbox ALL sites - OLD established sites with deep pockets?
I believe that this is very obvious. If they applied it to all sites it would have been noticed instantly and it would have created real bad publicity. Doing it with new sites let's it happen gradually and eliminates risk. It was always going to take a couple of months before the penny began to drop and another couple to realise that there was something seriously wrong.
Didn't that give them the boost they needed in the lead up to the IPO in August? As 2by4 has quite rightly suggested this is NOT conspiracy, it's just business US style. Have you seen Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11. If so did you vote Bush? (By these standards Google is squeaky clean.)
I would agree that it sounds like Google is acknowledging they are aware of the problem. Especially because it sounds like something Google Guy would say, which is how I would expect Google to say it. I mean it says something, but nothing truly specific.
Thanks for finding that Hasm.
So I guess I back to a final question. Will Google give solving it's capacity problem any priority? Will anything happen anytime soon. I would imagine that the answer to that question is "Only if it impacts revenue" If people in the sandbox continue to buy adwords to promote and drive traffic to there "Post April 2004" sites, then what's the hurry.
The final conclusion thus is, "Google is at capacity, if you want to play, either buy adwords or wait until we solve it. If you should choose to buy adwords, thank you, you've just helped us buy more time before we are forced to do something about it."
I want to provide my visitors with a link on a good article on Sandbox. I will comment it like “Read why you can not find us in Google” or “Google is stale”
May be somebody already published such an article?
