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

[petehall]

fjpapaleo:
I have a pr6 site with over 60,000 pages "indexed" since May. Plenty of back-links. Lots of content, anchor text and all "white hat". Trust me, there's a sandbox. Or more accurately, a supplemental index.

I think you'll find the supplemental index contains either pages that no longer exist (I see no point to this in all honesty) or pages with very low internal PageRank being passed to them.

If your site is a PR6 and you've tried to split that that PR quickly over 60,000 pages, I think you may fit into the latter category.

You'll also find it incredibly difficult, if not impossible to resolve this issue.

Google simply won't let go of our 3,000+ supplemental pages in their index - and I have now reduced the site to about 300 pages which makes this annoying.

I am sure we incur some sort of penalty from having so many supplemental pages, as that particular site has never recovered despite huge amount of time I've spent on it (it is also a PR6).

[lizardx]

"there is something built into the pages that are holding them back"

This isn't true from what I can see, although if you're looking to point people in the wrong direction that's a good thing to say. Are you sure you aren't doing your clients a big favor and budgetting in the purchase of pre-existing domain names into the projects, thus magically evading the sandbox?

[bignet]

If they were delivering results as bad as what you are saying then surely no-one would be using them anymore?

maybe bad but not as bad

switch overnight?

[Small Website Guy]

In August I created a site that has the title "kw1 kw2 noun". Naturally, I created links to it from all my other sites, then I sought links from other sites. According to Google I have 24 sites linking to me (by searing for the term "kw1 kw2 noun" which is unique to my site).

The site now has PageRank 5.

What's pathetic is that not only does my site not come up if you search for kw1 kw2, if you search for "kw1 kw2 noun" my site is listed at number seven. There are six sites listed above that, all of which have a link to my site.

I have zero visibility in ALL search engines.

Theories:

(1) Sandbox
(2) Over-agressive links from the sites I control (link on every page) tripped a filter which causes the site to be penalized.

Course of action:

I have no idea what to do. This is a real shame because I was sure that if the site got free search engine traffic, it could be the first site I've created that would actually make decent money.

I've stopped bothering with the site, why spend a lot of time programming a site that no one is ever going to see? I guess this is the strategy that They have, to make webmasters give up.

[gomer]

What's pathetic is that not only does my site not come up if you search for kw1 kw2, if you search for "kw1 kw2 noun" my site is listed at number seven. There are six sites listed above that, all of which have a link to my site.
...
I have no idea what to do.

What you are describing is very similar to what happened to a site of mine. We aquired on-topic directory listings. When we searched for our site name, the directory listings ranked higher than our site.

When the site came out of the sandbox, it ranked well not only for the site name but all the keywords it was optimized for.

My suggestion is to be patient, your site will rank, you just have to give it time and stay on course.

I read this here at WW and it stuck with me:
Sometimes the hardest thing you can do as an SEO is nothing.

[gomer]

rj87uk, yes, I agree with your observation in post 71.

If I understood your post correctly, you are in effect saying that for less competitive terms you can rank but not so for more competitive terms. This is a common effect of what many believe to be the sandbox.

Even sandboxed sites can get traffic from less competitive search terms where the total results returned by Google are low. As the search terms become more competitive, the total results from Google increase and sandboxed sites can't compete as well.

Here is some speculation on this. As the total results for a search term increases, Google does not need to go into the sandboxed sites to fetch results. For less competitive terms as the total number of results returned decreases, Google needs to dip into the sandboxed sites to fetch results. (I know this seems similar to what people have speculated about the supplemental index.)

[mark1615]

I think gomer is on to something - there is more to the so-called sandbox than a simple in it or out of it calculation. We have a site that is about 6 mos old. We have spend a great deal of time on it. It is nowhere for any important keyword. But it can be found for some off the wall four and five word variations on our main 2 word keyword. Think instead of widget widget you have eastern blue tasty widget widget.

Bear in mind, and I suspect this is true for others, as you get to the three, four, and five word terms, there is probably no anchor text with those terms in them. I tend to think the "sandbox" may have something to do with the links, but I really don't know what. I would love to have internetheaven's input here.

[tomasz]

Are you sure you aren't doing your clients a big favor and budgetting in the purchase of pre-existing domain names into the projects, thus magically evading the sandbox?

Well, I purchased thru Afternic domain name which has been online since 1996 and transfered my old (301) site which ranked very well,
After 3 months my PR and my back links transfered but new site nowhere to be found, I sent email to Google and they assuring me my site is not in penalty and they are giving me standard blah, blah..
What else my, old 'Supplemental' page ranks better than my new site, so I do not know if this only applies to "new" sites

[BeeDeeDubbleU]

Here is some speculation on this. As the total results for a search term increases, Google does not need to go into the sandboxed sites to fetch results.

Remember that Google indexes pages, not sites. How come new pages on established sites are ranking normally? I have still to hear a sensible reply to this question. If this was an algo change Google would surely apply it to all new pages not just those on new sites.

[MHes]

BeeDeeDubbleU
I think sandbox applies to links, not pages. Internal links may not be subject to sandbox, but external ones are.

A recent thread questioned the reality of hilltop. I think this thread not only proves its existence, but also how effective it has been.