Your Site is Sandboxed and You Don't Know It: Unsandboxed vs Never Sandboxed Domains

Another article I wrote up for my blog that I thought people here might find useful.

--
At least, there's a good chance it is.

A long, long time ago we all believed that new domains need to wait, then get unleashed. Now we think it's about trust factors-- get the right combination of factors to get Google to trust you, and you're not sandboxed.

People are missing a very, very critical distinction. "Unsandboxed" is not the same as "never sandboxed."

A never-sandboxed domain was around before the sandbox was established. Widespread attention to the sandbox started in 2004. Most domains that had a significant presence in their niche and appeared in Google in 2003 are likely safe. I usually go for sites that were at least around in early 2003, to be safe. An old SEOmoz article about the sandbox more or less agrees on this timeline.

With an unsandboxed domain, trust can go as easy as it came. Google is constantly evaluating its trust. You may be out of the sandbox, but you haven't left the playground.

With a domain that was never sandboxed, you can use more aggressive tactics and, for the most part, not worry. Google seems to automatically trust these sites so much that it doesn't care if you, say, get a bunch of incoming links from pages of mediocre quality. They don't care if you get 2,000 incoming links overnight to a brand new page, either.

This trust extends beyond just what you can get away with doing without losing your trust. It's obvious trust is used in the SERPs now. It also seems quite likely that "never sandboxed" domains have more trust than "unsandboxed" domains based on how we see Google treat them differently. By extension, never-sandboxed domains are going to likely rank higher in the SERPs as well.

Don't have an unsandboxed domain? Get one, and move your site to it.
--

 

Nice article - though im abit baffled with the unsandboxed domain bit

 

anything in particular baffle you? I could try to clear it up for you & in the article.

an "unsandboxed" domain is a domain that was once in the sandbox but that's now out. or at least ranking as if it's out.

 

Oh nah, i just didn't read it properly heh 2nd time is good

nice one

 

I think your theory is interesting, but you can't demonstrate it, 'cause all never sandboxed domain have an attribute: they are older than the unsandboxed ones.

The age may positively influence the trust of a site.

Have you made some test for demonstrate your theory?

 

it's not linear, that's my point. there's a direct cutoff, sometime in the second quarter of 2003.

any site made before that will have an absurd amount of trust and plays by a different set of rules, any site made after that plays by the rules of the sandbox; they may be able to get out, but they always risk going back in.

this is based on extensive personal experience as well as talking with other individuals who definitely know what they're doing (some much moreso than me, even) who have confirmed they've experienced the same.

 

Do you know of a good place to get older domains (before Q2 of '03)? I'd like to give this a try. Thanks!

 

when I need one I track them down manually and make offers until I get someone to accept.

 

Do you know of any sites that may aggregate older sites up for sale? Here is an interesting auction site, but you would have to "who is" all of them to see which were older: namepros.com/archive/index.php/f-63.html

 

a who is won't do much of anything; it's how long the site's been in google, not how old the domain is.

 

gotcha, thanks.

 

So how do you know how long it has been indexed in Google ?

 

there's no way to know for sure, unfortunately.

archive.org can help to some extent but obviously its data is not the same as google's.

 

what happens if there's a gap in the archive.org records?

for example, a domain was indexed from 2000-2004, then something happened to make it disappear for a year or so, then it appears indexed again from 2005 onwards ?

 

no way I can tell you for sure unfortunately.

 

Disgust you wrote somewhere about buying old domains before 2004 to escape the sandbox, but I have heard that google places the domain back into the sandbox because of the new registration details when the new owner buys the site. Have you ever experienced this before?

 

what if you bought a domain that was not in sandbox and then did a 301 redirect to new domain, would that get you out of the sandbox?

 

surprised you remember that

you're confusing transfering a site vs buying an expired one. buying an expired one DOES reset things.

no, has to be the other way around.

 

Do you believe that new pages are sandboxed as well?

 

no, the sandbox affects domains, not pages, not subdirectories, not subfolders, etc.