Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
In the industry I'm in, this site is aimed at the highest niche - i.e. the most popular part of that industry with the most searched keyphrases. For the top five keyphrases I rank between 1-4 on both Yahoo and MSN. On Google I don't rank anywhere on the first 10 pages for any of them, I went right the way through for one of the phrases and found my listing at No.943
I've been an avid disputer of the Sandbox theory ever since people started looking for it as an excuse as to why their customer's sites weren't ranking! But now, with this site where:
- the site is 100% unique (i.e. handwritten and designed from scratch)
- with natural linking (we ARE an authority in the industry)
- natural SEO (e.g. nothing stuffed, no doorways, no cross-linking etc.)
- it has it's own unique IP address
there is only one thing that stands out: The site was registered in Sept 2005. We've never been "dropped" on Google, the site just never ranked in the first place.
(September 2005 is only 8 months gone. It can take more than a year).
That said, I hope your site makes it out of the sandbox soon.
I think to escape the sandbox we need to see a full update - nothing more.
I believe that IP is the update and it's just a matter of time until it starts to spread, presumably when any issues they might be having with it have been resolved.
Quite how long that will be is anyone's guess!
(If I'm wrong, I think I'll cry...)
Also quite interesting - we are number 1 on MSN and 6 on Yahoo for our main keyword, whereas Google lists us at around 900.
How long has 64.233.179.99 been showing these results.
We have a few sites in the sandbox which appear in 64.233.179.99 index :)
This has been going on for months and months... the stress is getting to me!
Just roll out the 64.233.179.99 results for God's sake people!
Please do not roll out those results, they stink for my area.
I've had some small success gaining Google traffic by creating pages which are almost, but not quite, related to the search term I am targeting.
I've been 'in' it since October 2005
Number 1 in MSN + Yahoo of course.
I've had some small success gaining Google traffic by creating pages which are almost, but not quite, related to the search term I am targeting.
LOL! That's the funniest thing I've read here. The sad thing is that it's reality.
Most of my traffic has been built up organically so it isn't a catastrophic drop but one side effect is that my Adsense click through rate has improved.
I manage a website that went online Mid Jan because of no traffic. I redesigned it by 3-23 and it has been ranking at top 10 for all major keywords in about 2 weeks and this steadily increases. It' is not in a highly competitive market and this is probably why. I've heard that the sandbox doesn't always start from day one so I'm hoping the delayed sandbox doesn't hit it.
I have some sites totally set for msn as I need short term revenue from them, and msn has no barriers to age of site, and seems to rate all linsk the same regardless if all coming from one server, of off topic or not.
Reality is, if you are ranking on msn, and not google, likely you've taken shortcuts.
MSN does a much better job at classifing entire sites then google does.
I like to use inurl:example.com to see who is playing games with my site name, and also use link:example.com to see whose "links" to my site are really 302 redirects, then I submit their site to Google's automated instant URL removal tool.
Another trick we do is to take one of our keywords that we advertise on google, and search it in google with our site name. For example, do this search:
"diamond rings" mysite.com
We found over 60,000 bogus SERP scraper sites linking to us through our paid Google adwords lisitngs, and our Overture PPC listings.
To get those 60,000+ sites removed out of Google's index, we shut down "content match" in Adwords, and completely shut down certain words in Overture. It took about a week of Google crawling those sites for them to drop out on certain searches.
Good, finally you believe there is a sandbox.
Now that you started it, I would like to share my most recent experience. A site that was launched in Dec-05, came to me for optimization about 4 months back. I thought, best way of avoiding a site looking like an SEOd site was not to do any SEO on it :-) I waited for it to take its natural course. It acquired few links, just naturally and among them were 2 .edu sites. I didn't add even a single link, just did some basic META tags and had the client write the content himself and he doesn't have a clue about SEO. Expectedly content came out naturally with all the right semantics in it. Just added one phrase that was a target.
Now, it ranks #4 in MSN and #5 in Yahoo for KW1KW2KW3. But doesn't rank within 1000 in Google. I smile now happily, knowing there isn't anything more I can do to avoid the Sandbox, unless I have the luxury to get links from CNN/Stanford/MicroSoft all together :-)
Today the site is still in the sandbox. It ranked 4th in Yahoo and 56th in MSN for the main keyword. But it cannot be found in Google for main keyword.
There are signs that it will soon be out of the sandbox, for 3 or more keywords phrases with results lesser 500,000 it is starting to show within the 1st five pages of Google.
I've stop looking for link exchange and doesn't do much of that now instead I keep adding one new page to the site every weekend, but so far still no luck with Google.
if your url is widgets.com/blue-widgets/the-widget.html with onpage us of h1 tags etc
good chance with only a few links you'll do well for the widget
not so in google
msn, is just not as good at getting around obvious seo as google
I've had some small success gaining Google traffic by creating pages which are almost, but not quite, related to the search term I am targeting.
This is indeed the truth! If your optimizing for blue widgets you might as well call them blue gadgets, blue tinkers and maybe you'll show up for blue widgets. I am quite surprised Google is gaining ground on MSN and Yahoo still even after their index is downright outdated and getting more and more irrelevant by the day.
Good, finally you believe there is a sandbox.
Welcome to the club ;)
Internetheaven, I am sorry that it had to take a personal experience to believe sandbox effect exists.
I didn't say I believed in it. I'm not quite sure what I'm allowed to say as most of you will have noticed my last thread "disappeared". But short version is, I'm sort of looking for suggestions as to what else could have caused it because the only thing I can see is the age factor. Remembering of course that I have sites of the same age all ranking fine.
internetheaven - can I please ask how you rank on 64.233.179.99
I don't rank on it at all.
Reality is, if you are ranking on msn, and not google, likely you've taken shortcuts.
I've heard some rubbish in my time, but, come on ... this is the ONLY site that I've had a problem with. I have dozens of them on the go and have done for 6 years now. I don't think my sites could get much whiter, we don't even go for reciprocal linking.
Reality is, if you are ranking on msn, and not google, likely you've taken shortcuts.
I think this is quite misleading. There is no ranking relationship between MSN and Google. You can rank on one or other or both and I don't think it has anything to do with shortcuts.
Did you change anything "on page" shortly after launch and after Google indexed the site?
I have found that once Google has indexed a new page, changing it shortly after launch is the kiss of death. My pages are static (fixed) and don't change very often with the exception of a few. Those pages I have launched and left alone, rank immediately. But if I change almost anything, it will drop off the map and not reappear for about a year.
I am not saying this is so for news sites and pages which change frequently, but if a page is changed for anything which may be construed as SEO purposes, (whether it is or not) it seems to me that Google is able to detect that and the page gets hammered.
This is an observation based on my own experiences folks ... so don't jump down my throat.
my site is hosted in Thailand, but I don't think web hosting location is a factor.
I have another site hosted at the same place and is ranking well in Google.
Those of you who think your sit eis sanboxed, probably are not really sandboxed at all.
Sandbox usually means that Google is punishing your site by REMOVING it from the index completely due to gross violations of spamdexing of one form or another, usually cloaking, 302 redirects of incoming links, duplicate content on other sites, samll font text (Font Size="-1"), hidden text same color as background, keyword stuffing in ALT tags, etc.
I assume none of us legit site owners are doing any of that nonsense. I know my site is high quality, writeen for hmand, and friendly to search engines without breaking the rules.
I suspect that many of you THINK you are sandboxed, when you really are not. For example, several of our searches that previously ranked in the Top 10 can now be found anywhere from rank #200, to 500, to page 90 of results. That might make some site owners think they are sandboxed.
That is not Sandboxed, that is Google's ill-tuned ranking filters, as we found on May 16-18, when for 2 days, Google had our site correctly ranked back in the Top 10, then on May 18, it went back down to social Siberia in the #300 ranking range.
So my question is are you guys just assuming you are sandboxed because you cannot find your site in the first 10 pages, or are you searching every page looking for it and it really IS missing from the index? Big difference.
I will sit there and search every SERP page of Google until I find my page, and track it with Excel.
Even if my page in question appears on page 80 of the results, I don't consider my site sandboxed, I consider it poorly filtered by Google, in spite of my best efforts to tune the site and keep my content fresh.
BTW, does anyone know of a good tool that will just tell you what your rank is on Google for a particular keyword no matter how bad the rank is?
THis would be useful so we don't have to keep clicking Google for 90 pages and waste their bandwidth. Too many useless ranking tools just tell you "not in the first 30". Well No S___ Sherlock, I already know that without having to paypal you $10.
That would save us all a lot of time.
Somebody please respond!
I think many of you might have incorrect analysis on just what is meant by SANDBOX.
I think perhaps that it is you who is incorrect.
Sandbox usually means that Google is punishing your site by REMOVING it from the index completely due to gross violations of spamdexing of one form or another, usually cloaking, 302 redirects of incoming links, duplicate content on other sites, samll font text (Font Size="-1"), hidden text same color as background, keyword stuffing in ALT tags, etc.
Whatever gave you that idea? Sandboxed sites are categorically not removed from the index. They are indexed but just don't rank.
There are signs that it will soon be out of the sandbox
What I look for is searches from AOL, Comcast, Earthlink and other sites fed by Google. They all seem to appear shortly before the site is released from the Sandbox. I have two other sites that went online last june and this is what happened to them and they are increasingly ranking for their major keywords now.
I've had some small success gaining Google traffic by creating pages which are almost, but not quite, related to the search term I am targetin
I do this for an artist site I manage. Each painting is in a gallery but each painting also has it's own page where the subject matter of the painting is featured in title,. description and text on the page, i.e. blue widgets on mount something or other.
where are your sites hosted?
Another more important question--are your sites on a Dedicated IP address. I saw research on this forum re this matter a couple months ago and the Dedicated IP address sites consistently ranked higher than those on shared hosting.
