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.
Originally posted by Powdork:OTOH perhaps they are just getting ready to let us in.
man wouldn't that be nice, not holding my breath though!
Besides, quality of SEResults seem to me far better without -asdf.. (except my own pages naturally :))
The reason I thought that this may be related to the sandbox is because I launched my site last July and have been indexed, but I still don't have any decent rankings yet. I have over a hundred page site with LOTS OF CONTENT ON EACH PAGE, but get a measly 5 or so referrals from Google a day. Even though my homepage is a pagerank 6. With the added parameters passed into a Google search, I do rank where I feel I should be ranking. Basically, from nowhere to some decenct rankings.
Is this hilltop though? There was a previous poster that said passing these additional parameters give pre-hilltop results.
-Squared
I've a site that went live in March, focused on a famous place.
Pages include one on a location within the place;
search for "obscure location" only - no quotes - produces over 4 million results (place obscure, the two words evidently not, tho neither a money word that I can see), and my site at #3
amend search to "obscure location famous place" and Presto! - my site vanishes, way below #100
just tried "obscure location famous place -asdf -asdf -asdf -asdf -asdf -asdf -asdf -asdf -asdf -asdf -asdf -asdf -asdf" - and there's my site at #2. [Thanks for this info, Powdork; maybe Mulder n Scully can post here, explain what it means.]
tried a few other searches where I do ok for "non money term", but just add the words "famous place", and Poof! - the vanishing act again.
Site does ok in Yahoo; indeed, Yahoo bringing more traffic than Google.
Couple of other, older sites I have do ok in Google, even tho done little with them lately; made both before learning notions of 26 steps etc. (Tried applying several of Brett's steps to new site, but hard to muster enthusiasm for adding page a day when Google is so cruel, callous n uncaring, sob [c'mon googleguy, you're welcome in sandbox forums too I believe!])
On topic with the sandbox but slightly off for this thread maybe..
We often assume Joe Surfer won't notice any sandbox effects. Going through my logs for yesterday someone visited my site multiple times from Y with the same keyphrase. Moments later the same ip visited my site from Google. They had to use the domainname.com to find me with Google though. I can imagine that prior to that they tried the keyphrase they had just found me on Yahoo with to no avail. Joe surfer just got the impression that Yahoo knows what he wants while Google does not.
Well said!
btw, with the -asdf keywords my new site which has been sandboxed since May appears in most of the top positions for competitive keywords. Sandbox will one day sandbox Google itself if this goes on.
That's spoken with great authority. How do you know? You're not saying. As far as I understand it from my experience I'd say this is unlikely, you're saying this as a fact. So how do you know? Do you work for google? I'm starting to suspect that Google keeps a few users around to help sidetrack interesting topics that start getting close to home in terms of truth value. I'd do that if I were them, don't see why they wouldn't.
While it's possible that hilltop may affect the search terms I'm looking at, I somehow doubt it, they aren't that competitive, although it's always possible. However, before I put this site into the sandbox, I ranked number 4-6 for that term, with pretty much the same on and off page factors at work, once the sandbox put it down to around page 20-25, I didn't. Then the tool shows me again ranking right around where I was before. There's been a few changes in links since site entered sandbox, which would account for move from 4 to 1. Sorry, I don't buy your explanation. Especially since you offer exactly zero argument, evidence, or even vague attempt to demonstrate any reasoning for this conclusion. Like this: The sky is green today. Do better and your point might be interesting, as it is it's not.
"the number of domains leaving the sandbox is equal to the number of domains dropped by google from the main index!"
I'd say the number of uris entering the index is equal to the number of uris leaving the index, give or take.
Do you work for google? I'm starting to suspect that Google keeps a few users around to help sidetrack interesting topics that start getting close to home in terms of truth value
We do not!...I mean...that seems unlikely.
What seems unlikely? That a company that just had an IPO worth 50 billion dollars might once in a while try to subtly influence what the seo community talks about in terms of figuring out its algo? Which would cost them only a few hours work a week to do? Which is the kind of thing almost all other companies in the world do routinely, it's called PR [not pagerank, public relations], that's built around spending as little as possible to get yourself the kind of press you want. Either Google is not a company acting like other companies, or it is. I think it is. Why else would they be hiring key MS people? I think it might help in people's thinking re google if we stopped referring to it by that cute name and call it something less interesting, like searchx. That would help people get rid of some of that emotional attachment they seem to have formed over the last few years.
It is sandbox sounds like a good and understandble explaination. Hill-Top sounds far more complicated an explaination - and probably quite feasible.
I do not have too much knowledge on Hill-Top but I can say the sandbox explaination and the facts most of us share is:
a) the so called 'without sandbox' query does show all our sites in good serps.
b) we have what we consider qood quality sites that are not spammy.
c) Yahoo and MSN are giving us more traffic than we ever saw before in the time when google was our friend.
So my feeling the questions that are outstanding are:
a) is it hill-top, sandbox or a bit of both?
b) is the so called 'without sandbox' a good thing? Judging by the majority our sites are clean - (I think it would be a matter of time before we saw our sites return to serps)
c) how long does this last? has anyone asked Google?
Let me know if I have missed anything
Joe surfer just got the impression that Yahoo knows what he wants while Google does not.
Sounds like Joe Competitor's SEO doing a little research.
[edited by: 2by4 at 11:28 pm (utc) on Jan. 24, 2005]
I too fall in the same category as the rest of folks posting here. Sites been around since July 04, PR5 with lots of backlinks. Top ten on Yahoo and other major search engines with my keyphrase. Like others nowhere to be found on google.
However when searching: my keyword phrase -sandboxed -sandboxed -sandboxed -sandboxed -sandboxed -sandboxed -sandboxed -sandboxed -sandboxed -sandboxed -sandboxed -sandboxed -sandboxed
I turn up as no.4 which is pretty much where my site ranks on other major engines. So by adding exactly 13 words preceeded by a minus sign lets our true ranking revealed. Anyone know why more or less other then 13 times does not work.
Where is Googleguy to answer questions like these....
Which leads me to the conclusion that the filter that's removed using the -ddfsdfsd affects the sites in that competition equally. There is nothing common to the sites (old, new, large, small), other than the fact that they all started building links containing relevant anchor text at about the same time. So, this seems to prove that the filter is based on the age of IBLs, si it's not the Sandbox...
Just my 2cents...
Please, he's busy working at google. I've never been able to figure out why people trust any company representative to do anything other than the following:
1. tell the full truth, sometimes
2. tell some of the truth, sometimes, but hide part of it
3. deliberately misguide you to avoid embarrassing disclosures.
I never read a word that guy says, or msndude. It's a waste of time, you just have to figure out which mix of 1 2 and 3 they are doing in each posting.
Please, he's busy working at google. I've never been able to figure out why people trust any company representative to do anything other than the following:
1. tell the full truth, sometimes
2. tell some of the truth, sometimes, but hide part of it
3. deliberately misguide you to avoid embarrassing disclosures.
I never read a word that guy says, at least not reading it as a statement of fact, or msndude for that matter. It's a waste of time, you just have to figure out which mix of 1 2 and 3 they are doing in each posting. I also don't pay attention to tobacco company spokespeople, or car company talking heads, I'd rather trust people who have some objectivity.
With the -asdfs the top 2 results are #1, #2 Adword payers. W/o -asdfs they don't list.
That seems wrong.
Why hasn't anyone emailed Google? Surely the would respond if you asked them for advice?
The advise you get is to buy adwords or tell you what you already know from the google notes for webmasters about anchor text links and content.
Some sort of filter must be holding sites back so it sounds like the sandbox is likely.
One large section of my site that features well in all other search engines under search term "Insurance Jobs" as it is dedicated to "insurance jobs" sits in position 380. Just outside of anything even close to the keywords searched, after sites about Insurance quotes, life insurance etc, etc.
Sometimes Google lists another page of mine next to it, other times it swops it for another page from the section but it remains always in this position.
No one ever clicks on it because its so far away. Due to the high content and anchor text links the page has it should feature well in google, its a PR5 but sits after non relevant PR0 sites.
Ive given up asking Google why this is, but until they decide they will release my site its staying where it is by the looks of things.
Meanwhile im not giving Google adwords any more money under PPC. They have had a small fortune and offer nothing to help. Im now supporting MSN and also Yahoo via Overture until the day if ever Google do something about it.
Good luck all anyway.
Please be assured that your site is not currently penalized or filtered by Google. As you may know, sites' positions in our search results are determined automatically based on a number of factors, which are explained in more detail at [link]
If you'd like information about improving your site's visibility in the Google search results, we recommend that you read our Webmaster Guidelines at [link]. This page outlines core concepts for creating and maintaining a 'Google-friendly' website. While we can't reveal our trade secrets, all of the information we can share is posted on our site. In general, webmasters can improve the rank of their site by increasing the number of high-quality sites that link to their pages. Please note that we do not manually assign keywords to sites, nor do we manipulate the ranking of any site in our search results.
In addition, you can improve your site's visibility by purchasing sponsored links on Google. Our AdWords program offers a fast and affordable way to promote your website to your target audience using keywords you select. Within minutes, your advertisement can appear on Google to the right of the search results. Note that AdWords participation does not affect your site's placement in our search results. To learn more about the AdWords program, please visit [link]
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