New Domain Lag - how long to rank on competitive terms?

[yahalimu]

Hi y'all.

I've written yet another widget selling e-commerce site.

Its 2 months old and i've SEO'd it as much as I'm willing to for a while while it settles in and overcomes the 'sandbox' or 'filter' or whatever it is. I'm now concentrating on links.

We have reasonable 1st page listings on the more obscure keywords, as to be expected.

With the Major keyword, 'widget' we're listed 15th on Yahoo, (Not bad for a new site I thought) while on Google we're creeping up from 250th! Slowly..
My question is: How long does a new site wait until it has ANY page rank. (Currently its at zero), and can start competing better on major keywords. From my Yahoo results it's likely the 'History' factor is being taken into account.
I'd like to know before I start suspecting penalties etc.

Up to now I've only SEO'd older sites.
I look forward to anyone's observations.

MO

[tedster]

First, your PageRank is not something you know in real time - Google calculates PR continually for ranking calculation, but they only update the toolbar reporting a couple times a year. So you only ever get to see a historical snapshot of your page's PR.

But ranking itself - as in showing up well in the search results - is another story. History is important, but not as in a set length of time. Rather, what events have occurred around the web that touch on your domain. I've seen new sites get good news coverage and pop into the rankings right away when that happens. But it's more common for ranking to take 4-6 months, or even longer, to rank on the short, more competitive searches.

[Beachboy]

<<<< Agrees with Mr. Tedster.

[Miamacs]

while it settles in and overcomes the 'sandbox'

Ah, the common misunderstanding.
The sandbox is: low trust.
Not a chess clock.

Site history, quality links ( like tedster mentioned, mainstream media can help a LOT ), and the age - lifespan of other links all play into raising your trust. You can write the best code, the most relevant pages and not show up, ever, unless you clear the required threshold for trust ( TrustRank(tm), or whatever they call it at the plex ). Works like magic, and defends the mainstream queries from being overthrown every second day by high-PR spam.

You may be showing for 5,4 word phrases, the threshold is usually set only for generic keywords and terms which are really popular, meaning 1,2,3 word searches ( and... *hint hint* those with a lot of advertiser competition ).

...

You could sit around for the next 10 years and nothing would happen if the site doesn't have a link profile fit for competition. Yes, as with everything when it comes to Google, Trust is heavily dependant on ( quality, trusted, authority, call it what you will- ) links. Good luck though.