Should I give a crap about the sandbox?

I never knew or heard about the dreaded sandbox. After reading some of these posts it would appear some fear this sandbox with great dread?

My question is, is it really that serioius? Should I be concerned or just build my site, promote, perfect, promote, repeat?

 

Always carry on as usual - promoting and building, but if your site gets sandboxed, you're in for a very tough journey and there's no telling when it will be resolved.

 

I have mastered the sandbox. Maybe I should go write a book about it.

 

You don't need to write a book. You have the attention of thousands on this site.

 

we hear all sorts of things about this so it would be useful to know the truth

 

am still waiting to ever see an actual example of a "sandboxed" site.

just one.. ..but theyre like four leafed clover, or leprauchauns

 

Why worry? there is nothing you can do about being located in the dreaded sand box. Promoting, adding content and building inbounds should be the biggest concerns and that is something you can control.

 

The so called "sand box" is just an excuse webmasters give when they cant get good rankings for their site

 

I have never really experienced any sort of "sandbox" effect when starting a new site. I have actually had quite good results getting ranked pretty high for search terms that I wanted using a few social sites to submit my brand new content. I think that Google especially is placing a lot of emphasis on these sites and use them to point the way to higher quality content. You can take advantage of that by submitting your sites to appear on these.

 

LOL - that's a pretty good statement. I wonder how much truth there is to that.

 

man, this sandbox theory is more like the big foot now, some people whos seen it swear by it, the rest says it couldn't possibly exist...... my head hurt

 

Sandbox exist! I have sites there got out of Google sandbox in 2 months and others that took about 6 months. What I would suggest is if you are building a long term website, go on with what you are doing and your site will be out of the Googles Sandbox sooner that you think.

Good luck!

 

pretty much none. What's the explanation for when a new site's sitemap isn't indexed for months, while some other sites are indexed by the end of the week...especially when there's nothing blackhat or underhanded about it?

 

Its all to do with quality backlinks, if you submit a sitemap to Google and build just a few quality backlinks your site will get indexed in a week. Plain and Simple

 

If I told you that I saw Bigfoot playing in a sandbox, would anyone believe me?

 

Only if he was playing with the loch ness monster.

 

How does that explain a new site with zero backlinks (not even PR0 ones) getting indexed in a few days?

Or on the other hand- a new site with a few valid PR3's that can't get indexed no matter what?

 

The sandbox is a term thrown pretty loosely in the SEO community. Google DOES have an age filter. Gogle DOES have a filter that discounts the strength of backlinks initially and gives more juice over time. The rate at which you add links DOES NOT matter (I've added 200,000 links in 2 months without skipping a beat in the Google for a very new site). Some argue the age filter is a part of the sandbox. You could launch a site today and point 10,000 links to it from quality sites such as cnn.com and microsoft.com. I guarantee you that even after google does a major serps update, you WILL NOT rank anywhere for a competitive keyword. At this point, you could choose not to add a single new link; however, over time you will get the good rankings. It is a safe assumption to say that all major search engines have an age filter now. A few years ago, MSN did not have an age filter and you could rank a site in the top 10 in 3 weeks time if you were able to acquire enough links.

The problem with SEO in general is that there's too much uninformed opinions floating around.

 

I have launched about 20 sites over the course of a year and I never once have been placed in any "sandbox" or had anything come close that could be called a "sandbox". I just don't even believe in it, but everyone are entitled to their own opinions.

 

I totally agree, i have about 52 sites now and Ive never had any problems with indexing or ranking.