Comments on: The Google Sandbox

By: Linda

Linda — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 15:34:51 +0000

My website has suffered from this. Very frustrating. Even though I know I’ve got the keywords right and first class content – it hardly ranks with Google.

By: diseño de logotipos

diseño de logotipos — Fri, 01 May 2009 19:03:47 +0000

My site has been live for one month and if you enter two of my keywords together im in the first result, but if you entrer just one i nowhere in sight, can this be related to the sandbox?

By: Tips on buying a new website « How to Web & Blog

Tips on buying a new website « How to Web & Blog — Mon, 21 May 2007 17:13:54 +0000

[...] over a mature site (at least 12 months old) will mean you avoid the Google sandbox, a significant perk of buying established web property. Of course it really depends at what stage [...]

By: Marcus

Marcus — Sun, 05 Nov 2006 22:41:41 +0000

This explains what happened to my sites a couple of months ago and on the next update my pages and links where listed.

By: Jeff Barson

Jeff Barson — Mon, 27 Feb 2006 17:22:58 +0000

The sandbox certainly exists. Unfortuately, Google seems to have instigated the same strategy with new sites as with new hires.. better to keep the bad out than let the good in.

By: How To Make Money Online Using Niche Content Websites » Entrepreneur’s Journey - by Yaro Starak

Mon, 21 Nov 2005 12:41:08 +0000

[...] Once you find a few niches you think have potential search those keyphrases and see what results show up. If the natural search result sites that turn up are badly optimized (look for low PageRank, poor title keyphrases and heading tag keyphrases) and you are confident that a site with well optimized content would quickly jump to the top of the rankings and by quickly I mean about 3-6 months (remember the Google Sandbox is going to impact how quickly you get high rankings) then you might have your first candidate for a niche content site. [...]

By: » How To Buy A Website And Flip It For Profit » Entrepreneur’s Journey by Yaro Starak

Sun, 25 Sep 2005 07:28:54 +0000

[...] Taking over a mature site (at least 12 months old) will also mean you avoid the Google sandbox, a significant perk of buying established web property. Of course it really depends at what stage you take over a website as to how much of a step-up you gain and will no doubt reflect how much the owner will expect to receive for it (traffic for cash in simpler terms, but there are other variables to consider when selling a website). [...]

By: Entrepreneur’s Journey » Google Blog Search

Entrepreneur’s Journey » Google Blog Search — Wed, 14 Sep 2005 10:28:38 +0000

[...] I did some tests of my sites and one thing I noticed was the Google sandbox is having a strong effect on this site (or at least I presume it is), which makes me wonder how deep in the sandbox this site is for general web search (here’s hoping in a few months time when this site rises out of the sandbox I get a huge influx of search traffic). My other blog, The Official BetterEdit Blog, where this blog was born, is well indexed and showed up for many search terms I used trying to find this blog. The old blog has a lot fewer backlinks and lower quality backlinks in a PageRank sense than this blog does, but since it’s hosted on a domain that is nearly five years old it’s showing up well in the results and isn’t very sandy at all. [...]

By: Entrepreneur’s Journey » Does Yahoo! Search Have a Sandbox?

Entrepreneur’s Journey » Does Yahoo! Search Have a Sandbox? — Thu, 18 Aug 2005 08:37:45 +0000

[...] You might remember my article on the Google sandbox, a theory that new websites must wait before Google will take them seriously and index them high up in the search results pages. The wait can take as long as 12 months and is designed to stop spam sites from showing up high in results. [...]

By: James

James — Thu, 21 Jul 2005 01:53:11 +0000

Thanks Edward, I’ll give it a shot.

By: Edward

Edward — Wed, 20 Jul 2005 23:54:17 +0000

Sorry this is a bit late, but Jamsi you could try Google sitemaps – http://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/login Its not guaranteed to work but it should hasten the process and improve the effectiveness when Google does crawl your site.

By: Yaro

Yaro — Wed, 20 Jul 2005 07:01:07 +0000

Hi Jamsi,

The sandbox has been reported to last up to 12+ months plus if your site targets highly competitive keywords. But you shouldn’t assume it’s the sandbox – have you been conducting any SEO campaigning? It could be that Google simply can’t find your site…

By: Jamsi

Jamsi — Wed, 20 Jul 2005 06:27:46 +0000

A new site of mine seems to be lost in the sandbox as well unfortuantly. Any idea's on how long this will last or is it just googles way of taking forever to shift through new websites in the database?!?

By: Yaro

Yaro — Mon, 18 Jul 2005 09:24:29 +0000

Man, I’m going to start putting up free lyrics on all my sites too. Hmm, or maybe not, probably not my target market.

But good job Al, that deserves an article I think! Enjoy it while you can keep up too.

By: Alborz

Alborz — Mon, 18 Jul 2005 08:59:26 +0000

Google gave me a PR4 on the main page and a PR3 on the login/register pages and thats it as far as I can work out, the PR system is annoying me these days, I really don’t think it is that important, I am starting to like Yahoo! a lot too.

I have been getting 80hits an hour today from The Yahoo!

I am starting to give up on Google, one simple search result showing me as the top page has generated so much traffic from yahoo!

http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=lifehouse+you+and+me+lyrics&prssweb=Search&ei=UTF-8&fr=moz2&fl=0&x=wrt

keyword search in yahoo :

“lifehouse you and me lyrics”

I decided a few weeks back that I would index all the lyrics submitted by all users into one page where the search engines can index them. It was a really good idea, I am getting a lot of traffic which has led to a lot of new sign ups for the site.

Alborz.

By: Plusone Marketing

Plusone Marketing — Mon, 18 Jul 2005 03:18:28 +0000

Yes, the main page at http://www.plusone.com.au/diary/ is PR 4. An entry June 22 has a PR3, but one made 2 days later (and all subsequent ones) have no page rank yet.

It should be noted that the blog is on an existing domain – this means the blog was being indexed within a few days of my creating it – unlike a ‘new’ blog such as yours that was starting from a new domain name – which in itself would have caused some delays until Google started spidering it.

That said, of course your old blog pointed to it nicely – which is how I discovered it originally!

Also good to see how your ‘reader’ numbers have jumped recently.

By: Yaro

Yaro — Mon, 18 Jul 2005 01:36:12 +0000

Hi Matt,

Yes I agree with you. I think it is a case a gradual rollout of PageRank across the site. I just wanted to mention the sandbox effect as a possibility as a means to introduce the topic.

How about your blog matt – did individual articles gain PR?

By: PlusOne Marketing

PlusOne Marketing — Mon, 18 Jul 2005 01:12:45 +0000

If the google sandbox was taking effect then I think your whole blog would be affected. Have you checked the oldest articles to see if they have a PR? I looked and many of the older posts do – an analysis will soon show when the PR cuts out. This will give an indication of the latest PR database update cutoff date..

I note that your article page has no PR, but many of the articles do.

It appears that if you have good content, good inbound links (and outbound as well perhaps) then the sandbox effect will not be as evident.

I know of some site owners who have had sites up for 6 months and are still waiting…they have done very little ‘exposure’ marketing though.