The Google Sandbox Effect

[ScreaM]

The Google Sandbox effect, low ranking of new domains

What is the google sandbox, and how to get out of it
Written by Jon Berg <jon.berg|a|turtlemeat.com>


Introduction
The Google Sandbox effect is theory that exists among webmasters on the Internet that web pages on new domain names rank poorly in the SERP (search engine result page) even though they have a high page rank. The sandbox will be on new domain names for a period from 3-8 months. The Google Sandbox effect is ofcourse not an official rule since Google is very sparse with detailed information about how they do the ranking. So it is mostly speculation, but it seems to be a fact that 'something' like this is happening.

How to test if my website suffers from the sandbox algorithm
It is belived that Yahoo! and MSN do not incorporate a sandbox algorithm in their ranking of web pages. If you do a search for a general term on Yahoo or MSN and manage to get a high ranking, say the first spot for your page, and for the same query have a significant poor ranking on Google it could be the sandbox.

How to get out of the sandbox penality
The bummer answer is that there is not much you can do to get out of it. You just have to wait till the sandbox automatically goes away. The sandbox effect will go away on it's own after 3-8 months after you have opened your domain. A tip could be to plan ahead, if you know you are opening a site in a couple of months, get a temporarly page up and link to it. That way the sandbox will go away faster when you have the real content up. There have been some suggestions that it may help remove the sandbox to get inbound links to various content pages on the new site, not just the front page.

Why Google have the sandbox
Make you so annoyed that you will be paying for advertising and then Google will earn a lot of money. Maybe not directly true, but it may feel unfair for new webmasters. The more likely reason for the sandbox effect is that Google wants to prevent people to constantly set up new domains and link between them, creating mini networks for the purpose of getting inbound links from 'other' sites. From Google's perspective it may be more useful with big quallity sites than a lot of small sites. So ranking quality domains high makes sense since quality content is likely to be put on quality domains. In the real world there are few instant stars, stars take time to build. For a website to become a star should take some time to build up quallity content. When a site becomes an instant page rank star, Google should maybe become a bit suspicious, because of pagerank maipulation. Sites doing pagerank manipulations schemes are more likely to blow up in the long run. So if you have not blown up during the sandbox you are less likely to be a spammer.

http://fragments.turtlemeat.com/goog...box-effect.php

[Head Boy]

Well it's better to buy a domain from the previous owner before it is taken out of the zone, but you probably have to pay more for it. This is one advantage of having a domain interchange between Netpond members.

[gothic]

Originally Posted by Head Boy

Well it's better to buy a domain from the previous owner before it is taken out of the zone, but you probably have to pay more for it. This is one advantage of having a domain interchange between Netpond members.

hehehe ... right! Find all treasure here... to netpond

Thanks guys, I already figured something like the "sandbox" was going on. I didn't know what or how or when though... Is google the only one?

[roba59]

Originally Posted by Head Boy

Well it's better to buy a domain from the previous owner before it is taken out of the zone, but you probably have to pay more for it. This is one advantage of having a domain interchange between Netpond members.

And you won't need to wait 3-8 months. Time is money.

[Moondog]

I could be wrong here. But I don't agree with this theory at all. The last two sites I have designed where I took pride in them and designed them specificially to be search engine friendly on the specific keywords I was concentrating on made it right to the first page on google within the first 2 months. Which in all honesty would of been much sooner if search engines added you sooner.

I do agree how ever that it is smart to buy domains and take advantage of their status in the search engines already.

My last site how ever they did take a while to give me an official page rank. But even before I had a PR rating I was still on the first page of results. And as soon as I got a PR rating the first keyword I wanted was now in first place on google, and a bunch of my secondary keywords all of a sudden appeared out of obscurity and was listed on the first page of results. This took 4.5 months to get a PR rating.

Even if this Sandbox theory exhists, if you know what you are dong you can fight your way out of it to a degree.

[Linkster]

I also agree hat the Sandbox is just a theory that people have come up with to blame thier woes on - it "appeared" at the same time that Google announced that they were going to do something about the purchasing of expired domains for their existing backlinks and PR (especially DMOZ listed domains) and I believe to this day that this is the real deal about the "sandbox" effect - Im one of those hat has also set up sites on clean domains (never registered) and had no problem getting into Google and getting ranked - only time I had a problem was when I tried to use an expired I had picked up

And BTW - great job for opening this forum!!!

[gothic]

Still, the exact way of rating remains rather obscure to me. I guess you 2 have been able to "crack the code"... How? Did you push massive traffic to it to be recognised faster or something?
Right now, I'm trying to build a "budget-plan" and I'm trying to figure out what is most important & where should I reserve the most investments for.
Should I go for a hyperexpensive domain or better get a cheap new one and invest more in building up the traffic?
As far as I learned by now : buying traffic works if you buy from the right person (found some here already ;-)
But still, it's mostly a temporary "boost", one that pays back if the site is good enough, sure. But still temporary.
On the other hand, an existing domain comes with expectations from its visitors so I have to be carefull to be able to provide at least enough to keep the "regulars" happy and attract more. Therefor I can not plan my content in advance & will cost me dearly if I can't provide enough in time.

Conclusion :
"new domain" : cheap & gives me time to plan, even if taken I can come up with another similar name. Expensive to build up traffic though (I have to start from scratch!)
"used domain" : Expensive domain & maybe expensive content (I have no time to bargain...) but should pay back fast since still listed in SE & maybe even old linklists, tgp's, who's managers forgot/didn't care to update.

Please, shed some light...

[Linkster]

gothic - first off lets clear up a misconception:
the amount of traffic sent to a domain has nothing to
do with the ranking of a page in Google - it has to do with
the amount of "different" people linking to the page from
the outside - that is how the original Google "page-rank"
algorithm works - the more links (votes) from the outside
the higher you rank. Now there are loads of variables on top
of this (over 100 different variables in play during the ranking)
that are as simple as the amount of times your "targetted" keywords
appear on each page and as complex as how relavent those
links from the outside are to your content

Note in the above I talk about "pages" not "sites".
This is also a very important distinction - Google ranks pages -
not sites as a whole.

Now your real question here - should you buy an established domain
or a brand new one - it really depends on whether you can buy the
existing domain while it is still active or if you end up buying it after
it has gone into expiring mode - Ive seen plenty of transfers of existing
domains that maintain there rankings and therefore the traffic from
the SE's. On the other hand if the domain has gone into the expired cycle
then in "most" cases - I have seen the domain lose everything.

Whether you should buy a used domain is up to you - and
really depends moe on the amount of income generating
potential it currently has - and to be quite honest I wouldnt
ever make a decision on buying a current domain on SE listings
alone - there are too many things that can (and do) go wrong
every update in Google - just like I wouldnt ever make a business
plan based on anticipated "free" traffic from a Search Engine - again
I've seen too many people dropped from the listings for some
totally obscure reasons - and all of their income go completely
down the drain

[gothic]

Thank you, Linkster!!!

Off course I don't decide about it just like that without looking at all points. (why else do you think it takes me so long until I register?) I was just wondering...

So, in the end, if I start a new domain and buy traffic from someone, it won't have any effect on SE's since all traffic comes from the same and therefor only counts as 1 link... right?

Still, I also heard that google also counts the value of a link, meaning that if you are linked too from a good site, it counts more than others. (that's why I thought they counted the number of "hits" as well...)

Also : Thanks for the warning about the SE's & lists! Didn't think of such hard concequenses yet...

I wouldn't bet on a single horse...
I collect "link-possibles" into nice little db's from every possible SE, linklist,... no matter what content, some I like, others I don't at this time... but still I don't "drop" anything... one never knows ;-)

One more (probably stupid-but hey, it's me) question...
If google counts pages,not sites... interlinking will count too? FE subdomains, or interlinking own lists, tgp's, toplists,... Or does it automaticaly "drop" any links from the same (sub)domain.

And also : Is it better to have every page in the same site(or domain) to have different keywords based on its content or better to use all keywords from all pages in every page to get more points for "relevant (inter)linking" ?
It looks like a win/lose situation to me, what works best?

[Linkster]

First - the traffic sellers usually dont count as a link as they will not actually normally list you on a site - they just put you into a redirect program from pop-ups or popunders and redirect the traffic to you

As far as the linking within the site - most definitely counts - and definitely should do it.
Linking from a bunch of your different sites back to this domain - you might be real careful as if you use too much interlinking between domains, it can bring Googles attention real quick - of course we're talking hundreds/thousands of domains - not a few sprinkled around

Last week I saw a guy that bought a script that generates pages for a domain based on keywords scraped from the search engines - he ran it and dumped 670,000 pages into google - he did it between two domains, and they all backlinked to the index page of the domain
This week he has so many top 10 listings its cluttering up the results and I know that a few people have already reported him to Google so I dont expect to last long
Of course he made a killing on those two domains over the last week - and he just bought the domains on May 29th (Disclaimer - I dont support this type of spam - just facts)

[Linkster]

ooops - saw I missed one of your questions - it is better to vary the link text as this will do two things - first it will give you more phrases that the targetted page will rank for (be relavent for) and second - it doesnt lock you into one phrase - which in the future might be one that gets dropped from Google - its better to have 10 hits a day from 5000 different phrases than 50000 hits from one phrase

[girl]

yeah i tend to vary keywords as much as possible....not got to have one keyword with a whole buisness depending on it

[gothic]

Thanks linkster, you earned 25points as a token of my gratitude! (such massive & clear info deserves a reward...)

Also thank you, girl!

[girl]

Originally Posted by gothic

Thanks linkster, you earned 25points as a token of my gratitude! (such massive & clear info deserves a reward...)

Also thank you, girl!

thats nice.....

[Linkster]

Well - thank you (embarrased mode) - Im one of the old school guys that has always just tried to give back where I can - and have always campaigned "against" these so-called SEOs out there that charge for their "services" when you can get all the info you really need for free

[gothic]

Don't be embarrased lol
This info is worth gold to me!

I thank you all and hope to be able to return the favor soon!

[HpicAnn]

Nice read thanks Scream..