Sandboxed after two years?

freaky results - much like sandbox, but not sandbox, or is it?

[etraffic104]

This is weird. My site is more than two years old, and appears to still be in the sandbox of Google. Or so it seems. It's got top rankings in other search engines, yet, in Google, it remains on page I don't know. Have not searched that far.

If I search for an obscure term, it comes up, no problem. When I do a "site:" search, it also still comes up.

But here is the weird part. When I do a links: search, it comes up with NO results, and I mean NOTHING! But on Yahoo! the results are there.

My site is showing all the classic symptoms of the sandbox, yet it is impossible to still be in the sandbox after two years, or is it?

Does anyone know anything about this?

Thanks.

[JayC]

>> But here is the weird part. When I do a links: search, it comes up with NO results, and I mean NOTHING! But on Yahoo! the results are there.

The most likely explanation for that is that Google doesn't list all linking pages, while Yahoo does. In order to be displayed in response to a link: query, a page has to have a PageRank above a certain level. If all of the pages linking to you, for example, have a toolbar PageRank of 2, you probably won't see any displayed.

So I'd start by checking the PageRank of your own site's index page, and also that of pages that Y! shows as linking to you. While the importance of PageRank among all ranking elements is often overestimated, a low score there would indicate that your backlinks are relatively weak compared to those of your competition. Since Google gives more weight to this than Yahoo does, it could explain the discrepency in your rankings between the two indexes: strong on-page optimization may be giving you relatively good rankings on Yahoo, while weak backlinks (as Google sees them) may be resulting in lower rankings there.

[etraffic104]

Well, that's news to me! Thanks for the light bulb! All the links that do come to my site...well, lets just say that they have a low PR. Weird because those sites are supposed to be good sites.

But thanks. Your info is correct. And I do agree with you on all points. I just can't understand why G would do this. I mean, show the results only if your page rank is higher than # amount. But hey, if that's the way they want it, that's the way we'll do it I guess.

[etraffic104]

Another Q.

I have a couple of sites. Why would some of my sites rank top ten first time on G, no backlinks anywhere and competition stiff? And then I have sites like the one described above, optimized in the same way with not a big competition and a total disaster? Is it also because of a couple of poor backlinks to the site that the other well doing sites don't have? Or is it perhaps that no links are better than bad links?