Longest You've Been in the Sandbox?

How long until you got out?

[Teshka]

I must admit this question is born out of impatience ;) Of the five or so content sites I put together last summer, only one has come out of the sandbox (May launch), but that was 2-3 months ago. If it was just based on time, the two I launched in June ought to be getting more traffic by now but they're not.

So, just out of curiosity, if you've started new sites since this sandbox effect began, how long did it take your site(s) to get out or are you still waiting?

[Idaho]

15 months.

About a year and a half ago I started a new site and optimized for a very competitive keyword phrase (currently just under 6 million results). The site did very well right off the bat, and then I purchased a run of site text link that put it on 1000s of pages...big mistake. (At the time I'd never heard of sandbox.)

It just disappeared from Google's results. I didn't whine about it, didn't submit any re-inclusion requests. In fact I would have just given up except it ranks well in Yahoo. Even so, I've never been able to monitize it...beyond a few hundred dollars a month with adsence.

I've hardly touched the site and all of a sudden, 15 months later, it just popped back into Google and is currently on 3rd page, plus showing up for some other terms. Looks like I should update it and start adding content. :)

[Powdork]

It occurs to me that my site came out 1 year to the day (June 6) of it's launch as a new domain. I don't think it was a result of the sandbox though. I think there were canonical or some other issues that were handled by a reinclusion request. My guess is that I came out of the box earlier, probably around Allegra when I started to show on certain data centers but then disappeared.
There has been too much going on to focus on any one thing though.
1. Continued content additions, though with little in the way of new link campaigns.
2. Google Directory link appeared just before Allegra and probably is now a factor.
3. An apparently successful Reinclusion request. Site's doing well but the site:search is not. Still 80% url only listings with a site search. The total number of pages only represents about half of the pages on the site.

[TigerSBT]

The site that I launched Feb 2004 has now hit the SERPS at the weekend, while others that were launched May and June 2004 are still deep in the mire.

I am not holding my breath for this released site, who knows what will happen with Goofle in the near future.

[JudgeJeffries]

I launched 6 in March/April 04.
Half are out, half are still in.
Same writer, same size, same links aquisition process, same optimisation technique, bog standard, clean, simple template sites.

[alika]

Launched a new site in April, and site is now #8 in its main keyword. Hope it stays :o)

[subbu]

JJ:

I launched 6 in March/April 04.
Half are out, half are still in.
Same writer, same size, same links aquisition process, same optimisation technique, bog standard, clean, simple template sites.

This could be anecdotal evidence supporting that a site may remain in a holding pattern depending on how competitive the KWs are.

JJ - have you noticed if your sites that are getting returned competitively in Google SERPs are going after "less competitive" KWs?

S.

PS - here's my data - got out in 6 months (Dec -> Bourbon) - assuming that the update is more or less over.

The two major KW pairs pre update produced 2.5M and 1.5M results (mildly competitive) - those same KW pairs post update produce 1M and 800K results.

[fischermx]

When you do "site:mywebsite.com" and it does not show any page indexed yet the site is 6 months old ... is that being in the sandbox?
How do I interpret this result? What can I do?

[subbu]

FischerMX:

I'm very young at this, so take my reply with a grain of salt -

I think what you're describing represents one of two things:

1. Your site hasn't been indexed.

or...

2. Your site has been penalized.

S.

[randle]

We had a site in the box since March of 2004, and it just came out with the bourbon update.

[arran]

fischermx, subbu is correct. Do you have any PR4+ inbound links? Also, was your domain brand new or expired?

[fischermx]

Expired!
I've been experimenting this with all expired domains!

Two months ago I went and registered 25 domains on different topics, got it feed with a dmoz related listing, all they were indexed and even rank for some terms.

But some sites that were expired and now they have "real" websites are not even being indexed.
I guess they are not penalized since they show PR0, I mean, not grey bar.
One more things, I see in my logs, google visits the main page and then just go without looking further each month.
I don't have any big links to these sites, other than my other sites with PR2 or PR3, the same sites that linked the bunch of 25 sites which are now indexed and showing in SERPS.

[arran]

I've had the same problem getting an expired domain indexed. Admittedly, the site doen't have many decent links (only 1 PR5) but yahoo/msn have at least indexed the homepage.

Let's assume our expired domains don't have a penalty (probably true as penalties seem to be rare). What's different between the sites using expired domains you got indexed and the others? Links? Original site theme compared to post-expiry theme?

We already knew that pagerank and inbounds were lost once a domain expired. Maybe google is frowning upon all expired domains from an indexing perspective too.

[fischermx]

Actually, I didn't notice, now I retested my non indexed sites and I see two different kind of responses:

This :

Sorry, no information is available for the URL www.example.com

If the URL is valid, try visiting that web page by clicking on the following link: www.example.com
Find web pages from the site www.example.com
Find web pages that contain the term "www.example.com"

And this :

Your search - site:example2.com - did not match any documents.

Suggestions:
- Make sure all words are spelled correctly.
- Try different keywords.
- Try more general keywords.

Any idea on the difference on each one?

[BillyS]

Got rid of all my sites to work on a mid-size site (for me at least). First spidered by Google in May 2004. Still in the sandbox - deep. About two hits from Google a day.

[arran]

fischermx, the first example looks like you've searched for "www.yoursite.com" whereas the second was "site:yoursite.com".

I remember people saying that when you searched for "www.yoursite.com" and it came back without the first bullet point "Sorry, no information is available for the URL www.yoursite.com" - you had a ban.

What's interesting is that all my expired unindexed domains are missing that bullet. Does this mean expired domains are initially tarred with the same brush as banned domains? If so, how do you reverse this (as you have done with several of your domains)?

[fischermx]

I remember people saying that when you searched for "www.yoursite.com" and it came back without the first bullet point "Sorry, no information is available for the URL www.yoursite.com" - you had a ban.

What I remember is that it was the line with "click the following link" the one that dissapeared with a banned site.
I remember I saw this with a site someone posted about the Vatican, but I don't remember what it was.

[arran]

That's what I meant - I copy and pasted the wrong thing from google.

[hughie]

it's funny, I've had a few different results recently with some sites coming out with flying colours in this recent update, some newer ones coming out around positions 50-30 and a couple of older ones still totally buried for the intended terms

I've been a lot cooler on the link building with my recent sites which seems to have created the 3 months to 30-50 position sites

none of these terms are overly competitive (pos 1. has 50-150) external backlinks

hughie

[fischermx]

fischermx, subbu is correct. Do you have any PR4+ inbound links? Also, was your domain brand new or expired?

What about the PR4+ links? Having them, is it a bad thing or a good thing?
Yesterday I bought a site+content with PR5 which is on topic for a bunch of my non-sandboxed sites ...
I wonder if I could place a link for them from these sites, I fear to screw them ...
What do you think?

[arran]

What about the PR4+ links? Having them, is it a bad thing or a good thing?

Good - I was just trying to establish if your domain had a penalty or was simply unindexed.

Yesterday I bought a site+content with PR5 which is on topic for a bunch of my non-sandboxed sites ... I wonder if I could place a link for them from these sites, I fear to screw them ... What do you think?

Not sure if you mean linking from your new site to all your existing sites or vice-versa. Should be ok in either case.

[mypattaya]

I have open my site since november last year.The site have just been index with the last Pr update sometime in April and have not recieved any pagerank yet.

My site might have been sandbox because comparing all the result in google for keyword pattaya I should be ranking well.

My site has good incoming links, results are showing good in Yahoo and Msn.

I think getting too many links right at the start is the penalty that I'm facing now.

P.S. There's a link to my homepage in my profile

[robster124]

Had 1 site from May 2004 and 1 from Novemeber 2004 in the sandbox.

Both out of sandbox following Bourbon

[neuron]

Site 1 launched early February 2004, it ranked well for 4 to 6 weeks and then disappeared into the sandbox, and came out with Allegra, the beginning of February 2005.

Site 2 launched May 2004, it too ranked well for a few weeks and then disappeared into the sandbox until April 2005.

[Powdork]

Both out of sandbox following Bourbon

So bourbon is the key. How much do you recommend?

[Lorel]

I just had a site pop out of the Sandbox. It went online early January = 5 months.

However Google images picked up all the images on the site about 8 weeks ago. On the 5th week I disallowd Google images via Robot's txt as Google was not allowing any results from the Keywords other than site name.

It took 3 weeks for Google's image bot to stop the images and THEN all of a sudden (within 3 days) the site was ranking on 1st page for all major keywords. I'm not sure if the Sandbox just ended or if it was Google images holding back keyword rank. Regardless the Sandbox is over for this site.

[HansDekker]

Perhaps a stupid question but what do you mean by sandbox. I have 2 PR5 sites receiving hardly any traffic from Google. Same with 2 PR4 sites.

On the otherhand I have PR3 sites that are doing great..... and one of my PR3 sites is in the same niche as the PR5 site but the PR3 has 4 times the traffic as the PR5

Is this a sandbox issue, did I put too to many links for the high pr sites up in too short a time?

Can't figure it out. I have the feeling that PR doesn't mean much but perhaps I'm in the so called "sandbox"

[roadhazard]

Site is one year old now. Started to creep out of the sandbox. Getting 1-3 G. searches a day, some days NONE. Site is a PR2. Hard to get high PR sites to link to a PR2. MSN is all I get. I think when you first emerge from the sandbox and you see G. searches in your log, your site probably goes into an index which does not see much usage. Maybe in awhile, it gets bumped up to a better seen index, but mine is in the first mentioned type of index so far. Altho, I must say, after one entire year of NO G. searches, when I saw the first G. searches, it was almost ICU time. So, something is something, and we hope for better G. traffic in the future...You couldn't get me to ever build another site. The sandbox is something I don't ever want to personally go through again...yes, maybe I put on links too fast. It is an affiliate site, so that could play a part; just don't know...