Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
I have read this forum for a few years now and since many of you have convinced me of the practicality of the Google sandbox, and the reasons it probably exists, I have bid my time quietly, waiting for a site I had built to make its way up. And I thought it had made its way a few weeks ago, but not sure. I am hoping to build an informational site on a topic, with nothing to sell. Here is the situation.
Abiding by the rues I will use totally hypothetical keywords, to give you the jest of what is happening. Let us say my title is Blue Elephants - Rare and Endangered Birds. The site came online in August and Googlebot visits nearly everyday. My title also appears at the top of page one in the <H1> and a few times in the content. Blue Elephants when searched outside of brackets receives 696,000 returns and "inside brackets" 810 times. Rare and Endangered Birds appears 1,160,000 outside of brackets and 8560 times "inside brackets" searches.
Last week, the site suddenly appeared from oblivion as #1 and has since held onto #3 slot for a Blue Elephants search phrase. But the site does not show up in the top 1000 for rare and endangered birds search phrase.
The simple answer to this question maybe the second phrase is more competitive? Most of the top entries are from news agencies, as the hypothetical rare and endangered birds appears daily in a newspaper somewhere. But by page 2 of Google searches, some of the postings dont make sense and have nothing to do with the keywords, except each word may show up somewhere separated on the page. Note - this is the only site on the net that specifically deals entirely with the particular topic.
Now after all that, my question is - do you who believe the sandbox filter exists, feel it is possible that part of a title could be out, but that the other more searched term, could still be in the sandbox? Or is this a dumb question, and should I go back to being a quiet reader :-)
It's number one on MSN and Yahoo for the rare and endangered birds search term, which is the term more people would actually search for. But Blue Elephants is necessary in the title as the name of the site. So I can't delete it. Thanks in advance!
And thanks for hosting a very informative exchange of thoughts and ideas, Brett!
Apsrt from the sandbox there has been some discussion about a possible over optimisation penalty (OOP) as discussed several times including here ... [webmasterworld.com...]
It may be that your second phrase is suffering from this? Please don't take this as gospel. I am one of a few people who believe that there could be an OOP at work but the evidence is all circumstantial.
"Make the punter pay" may be the new Google mantra.
It's also interesting to note that the only other use of the word 'sandbox' is in relation to adwords...
'Google AdSense Sandbox Tool'
Under the blue elephants search where the site post is #3 - no adword adds appear. Under the second phrase in question, rare and endangered birds, and the one that doesn't rank - 2 addword adds. If I change the search to only "and endangered birds" - 5 adds. (hypothetical terms again)
With this few adds on an seemingly uncompetitive term, would you think this would still be a factor?
