I wanted to put this up for discussion in the general SEO community. Rather than post across all the forums, DP seems to have a strong SEO base, so I thought I'd try here, and see how the discussion turns. Google Sandbox: solved? Special report
Really interesting read. Thanks for letting us know about it It's an interesting theory - One certianly worth discussion. It has been mentioned in another thread how one of the things that may be affecting the rankings of the site, may be the lack of high PR links. If that were the case, it would certianly back up your argument.
It is interesting and maybe true for some ... not for one of my sites though. I already have 2 pr8, 2 pr7, a few pr6, even more pr5, etc. links (a few thousand in total) pointing to it but the site is still sandboxed (top 10 allinanchor, variable 400-600 real rankings) I think the sandbox may be "defeated" using a combination of factors but nobody seems to really know the recipe! And maybe there is no universal solution, maybe there isn't something that can be applied to all the websites the same way. I don't think the page rank is decisive. Also, many speculate that if there was a sandbox filter (I am a believer), one of the reasons for its existence would be to stop page rank manipulation (buying high pr links, etc.)
The pr8 and pr7 links haven't been there for very long (just over a month) but they should have kicked in a bit more!
Hi Brian, As you'll notice from my post at your site, I don't agree with your theory.. I explained why in the post. In simple terms your argument boils down to consistent upward movement in the SERPS once enrolled in the network. Unfortunately that's not always the case. Auth sites can actually suffer for the dilution. It's a little difficult to measure because the 'sandbox effect' is essentially about new sites anyway, but of course if you're doubling IBL volume, it can come back into play, even for auth sites. I continue to believe 'sandboxing' is about coming on the scene with no discernable theme (actually I'm yet to see a site whos IBL's were all strictly on theme, when deep crawled by G for the first time, actually *be* sandboxed). But hey.. that's just me Cheers, JL
The question is which links exactly does google think are "on theme"? In my oppinion they often get wrong the "related" area. Wasn't it an experiment done on this forum: a page being driven to top google results without any links from relevant on theme sites?
hiya Brian after reading your report, i am interested in your quick opinion on this... quote::""This is basic link-building practice, but the point to be made here is that you would need to emphasise building on high PR pages, rather than going for links simply in number - if you wanted to see results avoiding sandboxing delays."" which carries more weight in the examples below (simplified) a)links from 10 PR5's b)links from 10 PR5's + 100 PR0's I ask this as i wonder whether initiallty the 100 PR0's have some kind of 'negative' effect, your report seems to scream AVOID links from low PR's...surely any link is better than none,,unless it applies a negative effect? Yours G*M NB: I saw your post over on SEW, I am still getting served up adsense for G*E*M's on 20K Pages ...a phenomenon that i have never heard of for sure..if i had of known i would NEVER have chosen G-E-M as a handle....rather something more apt. (ie Solicitors Mortgages )
That happens by default. It makes no sense, from a SE perspective to deliberately slow down low PR links even more. There's no point in doing it. Will it improve the SERPs? Will it prevent link buying? etc.etc. Is there any reasonable benefit for Google to do it? I don't see it.
Hmm sounnds a bit like applying for that job training job and not having enough experiance. Not good for me...low PR now...but in time, you never know...and I share my high PR when and if I get one. a link is a link, just double check it's a GOOD link...check robots file etc.... Ian
ODP is a good starting point for me. If G uses any structure to define relationships, that's a good start. That said, there's always the difficult ones, but then I tend to defer to the SERPS. As for experiments, they do tend to yield a lot of info. Sometimes useful, sometimes not.
And again I say there are pages out there ranking very well without having any links from related sites - not even 1 !! Obviously I think it is better to have relevant sites linking to you - you might actually get some traffic from them. But I wouldn't ignore links from non relevant sites. At the moment google doesn't seem to take the relevancy of links too seriously.
I have always assumed that when I add a number of low PR links that it would take longer for them to be counted as low PR pages are spidered less frequently than high PR pages. I have never considered the time it took Google to apply credit for new links as "Sandbox". It has been my experience to add a number of new links (both High and low PR) pointing to a page and have that recent addition of many links have a NEGATIVE or even DEVISTATING effect on the target page. (i.e. go from position #12 to nowhere to be found in SERPS!) That is what I thought the term "Sandbox" was referring to. As the result of an ongoing (8 mos.) experiment some of us here have been involved with, we have shown that unvaried anchor text (all anchor text exactly the same) nor non-themed links (none of the links are on theme with the target page) have a negative effect on serp placement. Caryl
That was an amazing thread! And well done, I hope you continue to do well! Also your keyword and datacentre tools are very useful.
One other variable we're forgetting here - and might well explain John Loch's experience vs. other people's - is the actual targeted phrase and its competition. I've built a new site on a new domain and all targeted KW's were pretty much #1 within 2 months with just on-Page SEO and internal linking. No so-called sandbox whatsoever. But no competition that needs mentioning either.
That is true, I experience it myself. I have sites competing for keywords some very competitive, others much less. It's much harder to rank in competitive areas. I haven't seen any sites getting there overnight - even with intensive work.
I also find a need to question the following assertion in you article... This statement implies that if you use the Co-op network somehow you will receive a higher that normal mix of "high PR links". On what evidence do you come to this conclusion? In our experiment (linked to in previous post) we have strictly controlled the links pointing to that page. Recently someone donated links from the Co-op network. In the Google November 25th BL Update we jumped from 469 backlinks to 3530 backlinks to the experiement page. The vast majority of the links Google now reports are from the Co-op. You can see by this search of the first 100 links reported that the vast majority of links are "Low PR". The "*Chatabout*" links, mostly all zero PR, are from the Co-op network. In fact all of the links that Google is reporting that are coming from the Co-op are coming from VERY low PR pages. So, I do not know how you could assert that the links coming from the Co-op are of "Higher Quality" than one would be able to acquire elsewhere. I will NOT dispute that the Co-op is an incredible source for links, however! Caryl
But the links that Caryl found (from Coop) in Google show that the links from Coop have a variety of page ranks. (in this case they include hundreds of low pr) Therefore again that somehow disproves Brian's theory.
Yes, I believe that IS indeed the case now-a-days, TOP30! SO - How are we to know how many, if any, high PR links we are getting from the Co-op? PLUS the fact that we do know Google IS reporting 100s of zero to 1 or 2 PR links from the Co-op network shows that the assertion in the article, that the Co-op is a high concentration of "High PR" links is NOT neccessarily the case. I just do not believe that the solution to avoiding the "Sandbox" lies just in acquiring High vs. Low PR Links. Caryl