Sandboxed Sites - Back Together?

Do they come out together or one by one?

[McMohan]

Most of the new sites that I work with are still in the sandbox. Was just curios to know, if all the sanboxed sites come out of the sandbox during one fine major updation or one by one, over the rolling updates?

That is to say, should one be checking to see if the sites are out of the sandbox regularly or only when they know there is a major Google update? :)

Thanks

Mc

[MHes]

>MHes, do you work for Google?

No, Google works for me :)

[EarWig]

"Exactly - New sites does not mean they are any good. It is illogical to rank them above other sites that have pedigree just because they are new."

But a huge amount of OLD sites that appear in the Serps are NOT pedigree.
It is logical to remove those that aren't but this will never be achieved by an algo - only by human intervention :)
EW

[JuniorOptimizer]

Ahh, the poor surfer. Every day we here the cries of the average surfer: "Oh no, Google is stale. No sites with Whois information of March 2004 of newer are in the index. How stale".

Oh wait, that's not a web surfer's lament, but rather a webmaster's.

[BeeDeeDubbleU]

Exactly - the complaints are coming from those who are best qualified to comment!

As I said earlier, Google claims that its mission is "to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful." It is not now doing that but it has made no statement or admission about this so it clearly feels that it is above the law in this respect.

[Morph]

My site appears to have been sandboxed for the last 12 months! However only for one specific Keyword. I have a heavily optimised site - with a large selection of relevant backlinks and a great deal of keyword specific anchor text and general on-page SEO.

I only have two or three real competitors and the rest of the results are just single pages that mention the term once, some even geocities sites that rank higher than me!

I rank well for one term, but not at all for the other. I’ve just never been ranked at all in Google for the second term. Seeing as there are only two sites that come close to my SEO levels and anchor text then I should be on the first page and both Yahoo, MSN and every other search engine agrees, apart from Google it would seem. My current search engine breakdown is like this:

Term 1

Google: 1st
Yahoo: 2nd
MSN: 2nd

Term 2

Google: Not ranking
Yahoo: 6th
MSN: 10th

I started my site in Dec 03' and I am still not visibly ranking for the keyword (at least the first 1,000 results in Google). Now this is really strange because I have the most anchor text (of the term), back links and PR out of all the sites targeting that term. What makes it more frustrating is that some sites that don’t even mention the word on their site, have any authority rank, or have any PR are ranking higher than me!

At first I thought my site was a good example of the so called 'sandbox effect', but I just can't believe that Google could sandbox my site, for this term, as long as it has.

[JuniorOptimizer]

The theory that Google is doing this to force people into AdWords just seems too heavy handed.

The only theory that makes any sense to me is the "Age of Links" theory. At some point they built a trusted database of links, and if you have newer links, your site is trusted less.

And it isn't ALL new pages that don't rank either, so assuming this is all planned behavior be Google seems unlikely.

[MHes]

"to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful."

This is what google is doing, you just happen to be at the bottom.... someone has to be.

[BeeDeeDubbleU]

Excuse me, who said that I was at the bottom? My own sites are all doing very well thank you. There will be turkey on the table for my family this xmas and any work I have done for myself in the last six months has been done safe in the knowledge that Google would not be in the equation.

My problem is that I get annoyed for my clients, who incidentally have NOT paid me for optimisation, and I have no obligation to them with regard to SEO or their sites' ranking. But when I build interesting websites for others I believe that they deserve a fair crack of the whip. Currently Google is not giving them this.

"GOOGLE, ORGANIZING THE WORLD'S INFORMATION. ALL THE WAY TO 2003!"

[BillyS]

But when I build interesting websites for others I believe that they deserve a fair crack of the whip. Currently Google is not giving them this.

This points out a "first mover" advantage these older sites now have. Why did your client wait so long?

I view this as a test of wills. I am not going to hide or give up just because my site is still not ranking well. I've looked at the competition and improved on their offerings. Google will eventually recognize this.

[europeforvisitors]

I am not going to hide or give up just because my site is still not ranking well. I've looked at the competition and improved on their offerings. Google will eventually recognize this.

Good thinking. IMHO, there's a tendency here to focus on the short term instead of the long view. Even if Google does have a lead time of six months for new sites (or new commercial sites, as the case may be), that's fairly inconsequential in the overall scheme of things. And in any case, it's likely that the "sandbox," if it does exist, is a temporary phenomenon rather than a permanent fixture of Google Search.